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HE TALES OF CHEKHOV 
ms Por ele 


THE DARLING 
AND OTHER STORIES 











THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO + DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., LimitEp 
LONDON + BOMBAY - CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lrp. 
TORONTO 


THE DARLING 


AND OTHER STORIES 


BY 


ANTON CHEKHOV 


FROM THE RUSSIAN BY 


CONSTANCE GARNETT 


WITH INTRODUCTION BY 


EDWARD GARNETT 


New York 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1917 
All rights reserved 


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Reading Roor 


INTRODUCTION 
A NOTE ON CHEKHOV’S ART 


CHEKHOV’s range of subject, scene, and situation 
is so varied that it will be convenient here to classify 
his Tales as follows: 

(a) The short humorous sketches, of which the 
author wrote many hundreds, chiefly in early 
life. 

(b) Stories of the life of the town “ Intelligentsia ” ; 
family and domestic pieces, of which “ The 
Duel” and “‘ Three Years”—a_ study of 
Moscow atmosphere and environment — are 
the longest. 

(c) Stories of provincial life, in which a great va- 
riety of types —Jlandowners, officials, doc- 
tors, clergy, school-teachers, merchants, inn- 
keepers, etc.— appear. 

(d) Stories of peasant life — settled types. 

(e) Stories of unconventional and lawless types — 
roving characters. 

(f) Psychological studies, such as ‘“‘The Black 
Monk,” “‘ Ward No. 6.” 

One must recall here, also, Chekhov’s plays, his 
short farces, and his descriptive account of Sahalin 


life. 


v 


v1 Introduction 


By his supremacy as a writer of short stories, 
Chekhov has been termed the Russian Maupassant, 
and there are, indeed, several vital resemblances be- 
tween the outlook of the French and of the Russian 
master. The art of both these unflinching realists, 
in its exploration of human motives, is imbued with 
a searching passion for truth and a poet’s sensitive- 
ness to beauty. But whereas Maupassant’s mental 
atmosphere is clear, keen, and strong, with a touch 
of a hard, cold wind, Chekhov’s is born of a softer, 
warmer, kindlier earth. Had Maupassant written 
“The Darling,” he would have been less patient 
with Olenka’s lack of brains, more cynical over her 
forgetfulness of her first and second husband. And 
a French Olenka would, in fact, have been less naive 
than the Russian woman, and in that respect more 
open to criticism. 

The temperamental difference between the Nor- 
man and the Russian, in fact, reflects the differences 
between their traditions and the spiritual valuations 
of their national cultures. As an illustration we 
may cite Chekhov’s handling of those odious women, 
Ariadne and the rapacious wife in “ The Help- 
mate.” It is characteristic that Chekhov shows 
them to us through the eyes of a kindly, good-na- 
tured type of man whose judgment, however exas- 
perated, does not crystallise into hardness or bitter- 
ness. Chekhov, though often melancholy, is rarely 
cynical; he looks at human nature with the charitable 
eye of the wise doctor who has learnt from experi- 


Introduction Vil 


ence that people cannot be other than what they are. 
It is his profundity of acceptation that blends with 
quiet humour and tenderness to make his mental at- 
mosphere one of subtle emotional receptivity. In 
his art there is always this tinge of cool, scientific 
passivity blending with the sensitiveness of a sweet, 
responsive nature. Remark that Chekhov, unlike 
Dostoevsky, rarely identifies himself with his sinners 
and sufferers, but he stands close to all his charac- 
ters, watching them quietly and registering their cir- 
cumstances and feelings with such finality that to 
pass judgment on them appears supererogatory. 
Thus, in “* The Two Volodyas,” when the neurotic 
Sofya Lvovna abandons herself to the dissipated 
Vladimir Mihalovitch we realise that she is prepar- 
ing for herself fresh wretchedness, and whatever she 
may do, she is bound to go on paying the price for 
her folly in marrying Colonel Yagitch, the elderly 
handsome lady-killer. It is equally useless to pass 
judgment on the two Volodyas, who, between them, 
having helped to ruin Sofya Lvovna’s life, will go 
on shrugging their shoulders at her, and following 
their life of bored, worldly pleasure. This is life, 
and it is the woman who pays. 

Readers have complained of Chekhov’s “ grey- 
ness,” but such a story as ‘‘ The Two Volodyas”’ 
can with no more justice be called grey than can an 
etching by a master, whose range of the subtlest 
gradations of tone, in the chiaroscuro, stands in place 
of a fine colour scheme. Just as the colour of a 


Vill Introduction 


flower is not a solid pigment, but is the result of the 
play of light on the broken surface of its innumer- 
able cells, so Chekhov’s art, however tragic or mel- 
ancholy may be the life of his characters, produces 
the effect of living colour by the shifting play of hu- 
man feelings. Note, for example, how the “ de- 
pressing,’ squalid atmosphere of “ Anyuta” is 
broken up by the artist’s rapid inflections of feeling. 
Again, “‘ A Trousseau’”’ and “‘ Talent’ offer us fine 
examples of Chekhov’s skill in conveying the essence 
of a situation, and of people’s outlooks, by striking 
a few notes in the scale of their varying moods. 
Further, remark how from the disharmony between 
people’s moods and circumstances springs the pecu- 
liar, subtle sense Chekhov conveys of life’s ironic 
pattern of time and chance playing cat and mouse 
with people’s happiness. Compare the opening 
pages, in “‘ Three Years,” of Laptev’s passion for 
Yulia with the closing scene where she is waiting to 
tell him how dear he is to her, while he himself finds 
no response in his heart, and “ cautiously removes 
her hand from his neck.”” But Chekhov is too sub- 
tle, too delicate an artist to emphasise this note in 
his impressionistic picture of life’s teeming fresh- 
ness and fulness; so he then touches in life’s elusive- 
ness and promise in the description of how “ Yart- 
sev kept smiling at Yulia and her beautiful neck with 
a sort of joyous shyness.” Here is love’s new birth 
indicated with exquisite delicacy. And here, as in 
the little scene preceding, where Laptev stands in 


Introduction 1X 


the moonlit yard, a mysterious sense of the intricacy 
of the mesh of our lives steals over us. It is the 
poet’s special sense for catching an atmosphere and 
in his plays, for instance, ‘‘ The Cherry Orchard,” 
we find the same delicate responsiveness to the spec- 
tacle of life’s ceaseless intricacy. We get this again 
in the relations of the dying woman Nina Fyodo- 
rovna with her husband, the incorrigible Panaurov, 
and in Polina Nikolaevna’s inscrutable changes of 
feeling towards Laptev. With what beautiful 
slight, firm strokes these last two characters are 
touched in. If we stress here this side of Chekhov’s 
talent — how a feeling of the inevitableness of 
things seems to float in the atmosphere of his finest 
sketches and stories —it is to point out how his 
flexible and transparent method reproduces the pulse 
and beat of life, its pressure, its fluidity, its momen- 
tum, its rhythm and change, with astonishing sure- 
ness and ease. But any appreciation of Chekhov’s 
talent is inevitably partial, since its leading charac- 
teristic is its surpassing variety. This, the first vol- 
ume of a new translation of his Tales, presents a 
few aspects of Chekhov’s incomparable gift. All 
who want to know modern Russian, especially the 
life of the educated class, must read Chekhov. 
EDWARD GARNETT. 
June, 1916. 





CONTENTS 


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THE DARLING 
AND OTHER STORIES 


THE DARLING 


OLENKA, the daughter of the retired collegiate asses- 
sor, Plemyanniakoy, was sitting in her back porch, 
lost in thought. It was hot, the flies were persistent 
and teasing, and it was pleasant to reflect that it 
would soon be evening. Dark rainclouds were gath- 
ering from the east, and bringing from time to time 
a breath of moisture in the air. 

Kukin, who was the manager of an open-air theatre 
called the Tivoli, and who lived in the lodge, was 
standing in the middle of the garden looking at the 
sky. 

‘“Again!’’ he observed despairingly. ‘It’s go- 
ing to rain again! Rain every day, as though to 
spite me. I might as well hang myself! It’s ruin! 
Fearful losses every day.” 

He flung up his hands, and went on, addressing 
Olenka: 

‘There! that’s the life we lead, Olga Semyo- 
novna. It’s enough to make one cry. One works 
and does one’s utmost; one wears oneself out, get- 
ting no sleep at night, and racks one’s brain what 

3 


4 The Darling and Other Stories 


to do for the best. And then what happens? To 
begin with, one’s public is ignorant, boorish. I give 
them the very best operetta, a dainty masque, first 
rate music-hall artists. But do you suppose that’s 
what they want! They don’t understand anything 
of that sort. They want a clown; what they ask 
for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather! 
Almost every evening it rains. It started on the 
tenth of May, and it’s kept it up all May and June. 
It’s simply awful! The public doesn’t come, but 
I’ve to pay the rent just the same, and pay the ar- 
tists.” 

The next evening the clouds would gather again, 
and Kukin would say with an hysterical laugh: 

‘Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, 
drown me! Damn my luck in this world and the 
next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to 
prison! —to Siberia! —the scaffold! Hla, ha, 
ha!” 

And next day the same thing. 

Olenka listened to Kukin with silent gravity, and 
sometimes tears came into her eyes. In the end 
his misfortunes touched her; she grew to love him. 
He was a small thin man, with a yellow face, and 
curls combed forward on his forehead. He spoke 
in a thin tenor; as he talked his mouth worked on 
one side, and there was always an expression of de- 
spair on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine 
affection in her. She was always fond of some one, 
and could not exist without loving. In earlier days 


The Darling 5 


she had loved her papa, who now sat in a darkened 
room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her 
aunt who used to come every other year from 
Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school, 
she had loved her French master. She was a gen- 
tle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, ten- 
der eyes and very good health. At the sight of her 
full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little 
dark mole on it, and the kind, naive smile, which 
came into her face when she listened to anything 
pleasant, men thought, “ Yes, not half bad,” and 
smiled too, while lady visitors could not refrain from 
seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation, ex- 
claiming in a gush of delight, ‘‘ You darling!” 

The house in which she had lived from her birth 
upwards, and which was left her in her father’s 
will, was at the extreme end of the town, not far from 
the Tivoli. In the evenings and at night she could 
hear the band playing, and the crackling and bang- 
ing of fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was 
Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the en- 
trenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; 
there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had no de- 
sire to sleep, and when he returned home at day- 
break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and 
showing him only her face and one shoulder through 
the curtain, she gave him a friendly smile. .. . 

He proposed to her, and they were married. And 
when he had a closer view of her neck and her plump, 
fine shoulders, he threw up his hands, and said: 


6 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘You darling!” 

He was happy, but as it rained on the day and 
night of his wedding, his face still retained an ex- 
pression of despair. 

They got on very well together. She used to sit 
in his office, to look after things in the Tivoli, to put 
down the accounts and pay the wages. And her 
rosy cheeks, her sweet, naive, radiant smile, were 
to be seen now at the office window, now in the re- 
freshment bar or behind the scenes of the theatre. 
And already she used to say to her acquaintances 
that the theatre was the chief and most important 
thing in life, and that it was only through the drama 
that one could derive true enjoyment and become cul- 
tivated and humane. 

‘“But do you suppose the public understands 
that?’’ she used to say. ‘‘ What they want is a 
clown. Yesterday we gave ‘ Faust Inside Out,’ and 
almost all the boxes were empty; but if Vanitchka 
and I had been producing some vulgar thing, I as- 
sure you the theatre would have been packed. To- 
morrow Vanitchka and I are doing ‘Orpheus in 
Hell? —Do-come;” 

And what Kukin said about the theatre and the 
actors she repeated. Like him she despised the 
public for their ignorance and their indifference to 
art; she took part in the rehearsals, she corrected 
the actors, she kept an eye on the behaviour of the 
musicians, and when there was an unfavourable no- 


The Darling 7 


tice in the local paper, she shed tears, and then went 
to the editor’s office to set things right. 

The actors were fond of her and used to call her 
** Vanitchka and I,” and ‘the darling’’; she was 
sorry for them and used to lend them small sums 
of money, and if they deceived her, she used to shed 
a few tears in private, but did not complain to her 
husband. 

They got on well in the winter too. They took 
the theatre in the town for the whole winter, and 
let it for short terms to a Little Russian company, 
or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic society. 
Olenka grew stouter, and was always beaming with 
satisfaction, while Kukin grew thinner and yellower, 
and continually complained of their terrible losses, 
although he had not done badly all the winter. He 
used to cough at night, and she used to give him hot 
raspberry tea or lime-flower water, to rub him with 
eau-de-Cologne and to wrap him in her warm shawls. 

‘“You’re such a sweet pet! ’’ she used to say with 
perfect sincerity, stroking his hair. ‘‘ You’re such 
a pretty dear!” 

Towards Lent he went to Moscow to collect a 
new troupe, and without him she could not sleep, 
but sat all night at her window, looking at the stars, 
and she compared herself with the hens, who are 
awake all night and uneasy when the cock is not in 
the hen-house. Kukin was detained in Moscow, 
and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding 


8 The Darling and Other Stories 


some instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sun- 
day before Easter, late in the evening, came a sud- 
den ominous knock at the gate; some one was ham- 
mering on the gate as though on a barrel — boom, 
boom, boom! The drowsy cook went flopping with 
her bare feet through the puddles, as she ran to open 
the gate. 

‘ Please open,” said some one outside in a thick 
bass. ‘‘ There is a telegram for you.” 

Olenka had received telegrams from her husband 
before, but this time for some reason she felt numb 
with terror. With shaking hands she opened the 
telegram and read as follows: 


’ 


“Ivan Petrovitch died suddenly to-day. Await- 
ing immate instructions fufuneral Tuesday.” 


That was how it was written in the telegram — 
‘ fufuneral,” and the utterly incomprehensible word 
‘““immate.”’ It was signed by the stage manager of 
the operatic company. 

‘My darling!” sobbed Olenka. ‘‘ Vanitchka, my 
precious, my darling! Why did I ever meet you! 
Why did I know you and love you! Your poor 
heart-broken Olenka is all alone without you!” 

Kukin’s funeral took place on Tuesday in Mos- 
cow, Olenka returned home on Wednesday, and as 
soon as she got indoors she threw herself on her 
bed and sobbed so loudly that it could be heard 
next door, and in the street. 

‘Poor darling!” the neighbours said, as they 


The Darling 9 


crossed themselves. ‘‘ Olga Semyonovna, poor dar- 
ling! How she does take on!” 

Three months later Olenka was coming home from 
mass, melancholy and in deep mourning. It hap- 
pened that one of her neighbours, Vassily Andreitch 
Pustovalov, returning home from church, walked 
back beside her. He was the manager at Babaka- 
yev’s, the timber merchant’s. He wore a straw hat, 
a white waistcoat, and a gold watch-chain, and looked 
more like a country gentleman than a man in trade. 

‘Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga Sem- 
yonovna,” he said gravely, with a sympathetic note 
in his voice; “and if any of our dear ones die, it 
must be because it is the will of God, so we ought 
to have fortitude and bear it submissively.” 

After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye 
and went on. All day afterwards she heard his se- 
dately dignified voice, and whenever she shut her 
eyes she saw his dark beard. She liked him very 
much. And apparently she had made an impression 
on him too, for not long afterwards an elderly lady, 
with whom she was only slightly acquainted, came to 
drink coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated 
at table began to talk about Pustovalov, saying that 
he was an excellent man whom one could thoroughly 
depend upon, and that any girl would be glad to 
marry him. Three days later Pustovalov came him- 
self. He did not stay long, only about ten minutes, 
and he did not say much, but when he left, Olenka 
loved him — loved him so much that she lay awake 


10 The Darling and Other Stories 


all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she 
sent for the elderly lady. The match was quickly 
arranged, and then came the wedding. 

Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together 
when they were married. 

Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then 
he went out on business, while Olenka took his place, 
and sat in the office till evening, making up accounts 
and booking orders. 

“Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises 
twenty per cent,” she would say to her customers and 
friends. ‘‘ Only fancy we used to sell local timber, 
and now Vassitchka always has to go for wood to 
the Mogilev district. And the freight!’ she would 
add, covering her cheeks with her hands in horror. 
«Phe freiaht!.” 

It seemed to her that she had been in the timber 
trade for ages and ages, and that the most important 
and necessary thing in life was timber; and there was 
something intimate and touching to her in the very 
sound of words such as “ baulk,” “‘ post,” “ beam,” 
pole,” ““scanthng,” © batten,” “lath,” = pee 
etc. 

At night when she was asleep she dreamed of 
perfect mountains of planks and boards, and long 
strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far 
away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six- 
inch beams forty feet high, standing on end, was 
marching upon the timber-yard; that logs, beams, and 
boards knocked together with the resounding crash 


The Darling II 


of dry wood, kept falling and getting up again, pil- 
ing themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in 
her sleep, and Pustovalov said to her tenderly: 
‘“Olenka, what’s the matter, darling? Cross your- 
self)” 

Her husband’s ideas were hers. If he thought 
the room was too hot, or that business was slack, 
she thought the same. Her husband did not care 
for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at 
home. She did likewise. 

“You are always at home or in the office,” her 
friends said to her. ‘‘ You should go to the theatre, 
darling, or to the circus.” 

‘“Vassitchka and I have no time to go to 
theatres,” she would answer sedately. ‘“‘ We have 
no time for nonsense. What's the use of these 
(meatres st ”’ 

On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to 
the evening service; on holidays to early mass, and 
they walked side by side with softened faces as they 
came home from church. There was a pleasant 
fragrance about them both, and her silk dress rustled 
agreeably. At home they drank tea, with fancy 
bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards they 
ate pie. Every day at twelve o’clock there was a 
savoury smell of beet-root soup and of mutton or 
duck in their yard, and on fast-days of fish, and no 
one could pass the gate without feeling hungry. In 
the office the samovar was always boiling, and custo- 
mers were regaled with tea and cracknels. Once a 


12 The Darling and Other Stories 


week the couple went to the baths and returned side 
by side, both red in the face. 

“Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank 
God,” Olenka used to say to her acquaintances. ‘‘I 
wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka and 
} rs 

When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the 
Mogilev district, she missed him dreadfully, lay 
awake and cried. A young veterinary surgeon in 
the army, called Smirnin, to whom they had let their 
lodge, used sometimes to come in in the evening. He 
used to talk to her and play cards with her, and this 
entertained her in her husband’s absence. She was 
particularly interested in what he told her of his 
home life. He was married and had a little boy, 
but was separated from his wife because she had been 
unfaithful to him, and now he hated her and used 
to send her forty roubles a month for the mainte- 
nance of their son. And hearing of all this, Olenka 
sighed and shook her head. She was sorry for him. 

“Well, God keep you,” she used to say to him 
at parting, as she lighted him down the stairs with 
a candle. ‘‘ Thank you for coming to cheer me up, 
and may the Mother of God give you health.” 

And she always expressed herself with the same 
sedateness and dignity, the same reasonableness, in 
imitation of her husband. As the veterinary sur- 
geon was disappearing behind the door below, she 
would say: 

“You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you’d better 


The Darling 13 


make it up with your wife. You should forgive her 
for the sake of your son. You may be sure the 
little fellow understands.” 

And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in 
a low voice about the veterinary surgeon and his un- 
happy home life, and both sighed and shook their 
heads and talked about the boy, who, no doubt, 
missed his father, and by some strange connection 
of ideas, they went up to the holy ikons, bowed to 
the ground before them and prayed that God would 
give them children. 

And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years quietly 
and peaceably in love and complete harmony. 

But behold! one winter day after drinking hot 
tea in the office, Vassily Andreitch went out into the 
yard without his cap on to see about sending off some 
timber, caught cold and was taken ill. He had the 
best doctors, but he grew worse and died after four 
months’ illness. And Olenka was a widow once 
more. 

‘“Tve nobody, now you’ve left me, my darling,” 
she sobbed, after her husband’s funeral. ‘‘ How can 
I live without you, in wretchedness and misery! 
Pity me, good people, all alone in the world!” 

She went about dressed in black with long “‘ weep- 
ers,” and gave up wearing hat and gloves for good. 
She hardly ever went out, except to church, or to 
her husband’s grave, and led the life of a nun. It 
was not till six months later that she took off the 
weepers and opened the shutters of the windows. 


14 The Darling and Other Stories 


She was sometimes seen in the mornings, going with 
her cook to market for provisions, but what went on 
in her house and how she lived now could only be sur- 
mised. People guessed, from seeing her drinking 
tea in her garden with the veterinary surgeon, who 
read the newspaper aloud to her, and from the fact 
that, meeting a lady she knew at the post-office, she 
said to her: 

‘There is no proper veterinary inspection in our 
town, and that’s the cause of all sorts of epidemics. 
One is always hearing of people’s getting infection 
from the milk supply, or catching diseases from 
horses and cows. ‘The health of domestic animals 
ought to be as well cared for as the health of human 
beings.” 

She repeated the veterinary surgeon’s words, and 
was of the same opinion as he about everything. 
It was evident that she could not live a year with- 
out some attachment, and had found new happiness 
in the lodge. In any one else this would have been 
censured, but no one could think ill of Olenka; every- 
thing she did was so natural. Neither she nor the 
veterinary surgeon said anything to other people of 
the change in their relations, and tried, indeed, to 
conceal it, but without success, for Olenka could not 
keep a secret. When he had visitors, men serving 
in his regiment, and she poured out tea or served the 
supper, she would begin talking of the cattle plague, 
of the foot and mouth disease, and of the municipal 
slaughter-houses. He was dreadfully embarrassed, 


The Darling 15 


and when the guests had gone, he would seize her by 
the hand and hiss angrily: 

‘““T’ve asked you before not to talk about what 
you don’t understand. When we veterinary sur- 
geons are talking among ourselves, please don’t put 
your word in. It’s really annoying.” 

And she would look at him with astonishment 
and dismay, and ask him in alarm: ‘“ But, Volo- 
ditchka, what am I to talk about?” 

And with tears in her eyes she would embrace him, 
begging him not to be angry, and they were both 
happy. 

But this happiness did not last long. The vet- 
erinary surgeon departed, departed for ever with 
his regiment, when it was transferred to a distant 
place — to Siberia, it may be. And Olenka was left 
alone. 

Now she was absolutely alone. Her father had 
long been dead, and his armchair lay in the attic, 
covered with dust and lame of one leg. She got 
thinner and plainer, and when people met her in 
the street they did not look at her as they used to, 
and did not smile to her; evidently her best years 
were over and left behind, and now a new sort of 
life had begun for her, which did not bear thinking 
about. In the evening Olenka sat in the porch, and 
heard the band playing and the fireworks popping 
in the Tivoli, but now the sound stirred no response. 
She looked into her yard without interest, thought 
of nothing, wished for nothing, and afterwards, when 


16 The Darling and Other Stories 


night came on she went to bed and dreamed of her 
empty yard. She ate and drank as it were unwill- 
ingly. 

And what was worst of all, she had no opinions 
of any sort. She saw the objects about her and 
understood what she saw, but could not form any 
opinion about them, and did not know what to talk 
about. And how awful it is not to have any opin- 
ions! One sees a bottle, for instance, or the rain, 
or a peasant driving in his cart, but what the bottle 
is for, or the rain, or the peasant, and what is the 
meaning of it, one can’t say, and could not even 
for a thousand roubles. When she had Kukin, or 
Pustovaloy, or the veterinary surgeon, Olenka could 
explain everything, and give her opinion about any- 
thing you like, but now there was the same emptiness 
in her brain and in her heart as there was in her yard 
outside. And it was as harsh and as bitter as worm- 
wood in the mouth. 

Little by little the town grew in all directions. 
The road became a street, and where the Tivoli and 
the timber-yard had been, there were new turnings 
and houses. How rapidly time passes! Olenka’s 
house grew dingy, the roof got rusty, the shed sank 
on one side, and the whole yard was overgrown with 
docks and _ stinging-nettles. Olenka herself had 
grown plain and elderly; in summer she sat in the 
porch, and her soul, as before, was empty and dreary 
and full of bitterness. In winter she sat at her win- 
dow and looked at the snow. When she caught the 


The Darling 17 


scent of spring, or heard the chime of the church 
bells, a sudden rush of memories from the past came 
over her, there was a tender ache in her heart, and 
her eyes brimmed over with tears; but this was only 
for a minute, and then came emptiness again and the 
sense of the futility of life. The black kitten, 
Briska, rubbed against her and purred softly, but 
Olenka was not touched by these feline caresses. 
That was not what she needed. She wanted a love 
that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul 
and reason — that would give her ideas and an object 
in life, and would warm her old blood. And she 
would shake the kitten off her skirt and say with 
vexation: 

“Get along; I don’t want you!” 

And so it was, day after day and year after year, 
and no joy, and no opinions. Whatever Mavra, the 
cook, said she accepted. 

One hot July day, towards evening, just as the 
cattle were being driven away, and the whole yard 
was full of dust, some one suddenly knocked at the 
gate. Olenka went to open it herself and was dumb- 
founded when she looked out: she saw Smirnin, the 
veterinary surgeon, grey-headed, and dressed as a 
civilian. She suddenly remembered everything. 
She could not help crying and letting her head fall on 
his breast without uttering a word, and in the vio- 
lence of her feeling she did not notice how they both 
walked into the house and sat down to tea. 

“My dear Vladimir Platonitch! What fate has 


18 The Darling and Other Stories 


brought you?” she muttered, trembling with Joy. 

‘“T want to settle here for good, Olga Semyon- 
ovna,” he told her. ‘“‘I have resigned my post, and 
have come to settle down and try my luck on my 
own account. Besides, it’s time for my boy to go to 
school. He’s a big boy. I am reconciled with my 
wife, you know.” 

“Where is she?” asked Olenka. 

‘“She’s at the hotel with the boy, and I'm looking 
for lodgings.” 

‘Good gracious, my dear soul! Lodgings? 
Why not have my house? . Why shouldn’t that suit 
you? Why, my goodness, I wouldn’t take any 
rent!’ cried Olenka in a flutter, beginning to cry 
again. ‘ You live here, and the lodge will do nicely 
for me. Oh dear! how glad I am!”’ 

Next day the roof was painted and the walls were 
whitewashed, and Olenka, with her arms akimbo, 
walked about the yard giving directions. Her face 
was beaming with her old smile, and she was brisk 
and alert as though she had waked from a long 
sleep. The veterinary’s wife arrived — a thin, plain 
lady, with short hair and a peevish expression. 
With her was her little Sasha, a boy of ten, small for 
his age, blue-eyed, chubby, with dimples in his cheeks. 
And scarcely had the boy walked into the yard when 
he ran after the cat, and at once there was the sound 
of his gay, joyous laugh. 

‘Ts that your puss, auntie?” he asked Olenka. 


The Darling 19 


‘When she has little ones, do give us a kitten. 
Mamma is awfully afraid of mice.” 

Olenka talked to him, and gave him tea. Her 
heart warmed and there was a sweet ache in her 
bosom, as though the boy had been her own child. 
And when he sat at the table in the evening, going 
over his lessons, she looked at him with deep ten- 
derness and pity as she murmured to herself: 

f-rou- pretty pet! .< . my precious! ... « Such 
a fair little thing, and so clever.” 

“An island is a piece of land which is entirely 
surrounded by water,’’’ he read aloud. 

‘* An island is a piece of land,” she repeated, and 
this was the first opinion to which she gave utter- 
ance with positive conviction after so many years of 
silence and dearth of ideas. 

Now she had opinions of her own, and at supper 
she talked to Sasha’s parents, saying how difficult 
the lessons were at the high schools, but that yet 
the high-school was better than a commercial one, 
since with a high-school education all careers were 
open to one, such as being a doctor or an engineer. 

Sasha began going to the high school. His mother 
departed to Harkov to her sister’s and did not re- 
turn; his father used to go off every day to inspect 
cattle, and would often be away from home for three 
days together, and it seemed to Olenka as though 
Sasha was entirely abandoned, that he was not wanted 
at home, that he was being starved, and she carried 


20 The Darling and Other Stories 


him off to her lodge and gave him a little room there. 

And for six months Sasha had lived in the lodge 
with her. Every morning Olenka came into his 
bedroom and found him fast asleep, sleeping noise- 
lessly with his hand under his cheek. She was sorry 
to wake him. 

‘ Sashenka,”? she would say mournfully, “ get up, 
darling. It’s time for school.” 

He would get up, dress and say his prayers, and 
then sit down to breakfast, drink three glasses of 
tea, and eat two large cracknels and half a but- 
tered roll. All this time he was hardly awake and 
a little ill-humoured in consequence. 

“You don’t quite know your fable, Sashenka,” 
Olenka would say, looking at him as though he 
were about to set off on a long journey. ‘“‘ What 
a lot of trouble I have with you! You must work 
and do your best, darling, and obey your teachers.” 

‘Oh, do leave me alone!’ Sasha would say. 

Then he would go down the street to school, a 
little figure, wearing a big cap and carrying a satchel 
on his shoulder. Olenka would follow him noise- — 
lessly. 

‘“ Sashenka!”’ she would call after him, and she 
would pop into his hand a date ora caramel. When | 
he reached the street where the school was, he would 
feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout 
woman; he would turn round and say: 

“You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the © 
rest of the way alone.” 


The Darling 21 


She would stand siill and look after him fixedly 
till he had disappeared at the school-gate. 

Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attach- 
ments not one had been so deep; never had her 
soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously, 
so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her 
maternal instincts were aroused. For this little 
boy with the dimple in his cheek and the big school 
cap, she would have given her whole life, she would 
have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. 
Why? Who can tell why? 

When she had seen the last of Sasha, she re- 
turned home, contented and serene, brimming over 
with love; her face, which had grown younger during 
the last six months, smiled and beamed; people meet- 
ing her looked at her with pleasure. 

‘““Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. 
How are you, darling?” 

“The lessons at the high school are very diffi- 
cult now,” she would relate at the market. ‘‘ It’s 
too much; in the first class yesterday they gave him 
a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation and 
a problem. You know it’s too much for a little chap.” 

And she would begin talking about the teachers, 
the lessons, and the school books, saying just what 
Sasha said. 

At three o’clock they had dinner together: in the 
evening they learned their lessons together and cried. 
When she put him to bed, she would stay a long time 
making the Cross over him and murmuring a prayer; 


22 The Darling and Other Stories 


then she would go to bed and dream of that far-away 
misty future when Sasha would finish his studies and 
become a doctor or an engineer, would have a big 
house of his own with horses and a carriage, would 
get married and have children. . . . She would fall 
asleep still thinking of the same thing, and tears 
would run down her cheeks from her closed eyes, 
while the black cat lay purring beside her: “ Mrr, 
mrr, mrr.”’ 

Suddenly there would come a loud knock at the 
gate. 

Olenka would wake up breathless with alarm, 
her heart throbbing. Half a minute later would 
come another knock. 

“Tt must be a telegram from Harkov,”’ she would 
think, beginning to tremble from head to foot. 
‘‘Sasha’s mother is sending for him from Harkov. 
xe. Ob; mercy oust” 

She was in despair. Her head, her hands, and 
her feet would turn chill, and she would feel that 
she was the most unhappy woman in the world. But 
another minute would pass, voices would be heard: 
it would turn out to be the veterinary surgeon coming 
home from the club. 

“Well, thank God!” she would think. 

And gradually the load in her heart would pass 
off, and she would feel at ease. She would go back 
to bed thinking of Sasha, who lay sound asleep in 
the next room, sometimes crying out in his sleep: 

“Tl give it you! Get away! Shut up!” 


TOLSTOY'S: CRIT ICISMON 
bre. AKAN Cs 


(From “Readings for Every Day in the Year.’) 


THERE is a story of profound meaning in the Book 
of Numbers which tells how Balak, the King of 
the Moabites, sent for the prophet Balaam to curse 
the Israelites who were on his borders. Balak prom- 
ised Balaam many gifts for this service, and Balaam, 
tempted, went to Balak, and went with him up the 
mountain, where an altar was prepared with calves 
and sheep sacrificed in readiness for the curse. 
Balak waited for the curse, but instead of cursing, 
Balaam blessed the people cf Israel. 

Chi xxi, Vv. tr: ‘And Balak said unto Balaam, 
What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to 
curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed 
them altogether. 

‘* 2. And he answered and said, Must I not take 
heed to speak that which the Lord hath put in my 
mouth? 

“13, And Balak said unto him, Come, I pray 
thee, with me into another place . . . and curse 
me them from thence.” 

But again, instead of cursing, Balaam blessed. 
And so it was the third time also. 

23 


24 The Darling and Other Stories 


Ch. xxiv., Vi 107" And Balaks ‘angers 
kindled against Balaam, and he smote his hands to- 
gether: and Balak said unto Balaam, I called thee 
to curse my enemies, and, behold, thou hast alto- 
gether blessed them these three times. 

“Ti, Uhérefore now fee thee to thy place, | 
thought to promote thee unto great honour; but, 
lo, the Lord hast kept thee back from honour.” 

And so Balaam departed without having received 
the gifts, because, instead of cursing, he had blessed 
the enemies of Balak. 

What happened to Balaam often happens to real 
poets and artists. [empted by Balak’s gifts, popu- 
larity, or by false preconceived ideas, the poet does 
not see the angel barring his way, though the ass 
sees him, and he means to curse, and yet, behold, he 
blesses. 

This is just what happened to the true poet and 
artist Chekhov when he wrote this charming story 
he: Darling.” 

The author evidently means to mock at the pitiful 
creature —as he judges her with his intellect, but 
not with his heart—the Darling, who after first 
sharing Kukin’s anxiety about his theatre, then throw- 
ing herself into the interests of the timber trade, then 
under the influence of the veterinary surgeon regard- 
ing the campaign against the foot and mouth disease 
as the most important matter in the world, is finally 
engrossed in the grammatical questions and the in- 
terests of the little schoolboy in the big cap. Kukin’s 





Tolstoy’s Criticism 25 


surname is absurd, even his illness and the telegram 
announcing his death, the timber merchant with his 
respectability, the veterinary surgeon, even the boy 
—dall are absurd, but the soul of The Darling, 
with her faculty of devoting herself with her whole 
being to any one she loves, is not absurd, but mar- 
vellous and holy. 

I believe that while he was writing “‘ The Dar- 
ling,’ the author had in his mind, though not in 
his heart, a vague image of a new woman; of her 
equality with man; of a woman mentally developed, 
learned, working independently for the good of so- 
ciety as well as, if not better than, a man; of the 
woman who has raised and upholds the woman ques- 
tion; and in writing “‘ The Darling” he wanted to 
show what woman ought not to be. The Balak 
of public opinion bade Chekhov curse the weak, 
submissive undeveloped woman devoted to man; and 
Chekhov went up the mountain, and the calves and 
sheep were laid upon the altar, but when he began 
to speak, the poet blessed wnat he had come to curse. 
In spite of its exquisite gay humour, I at least can- 
not read without tears some passages of this won- 
derful story. I am touched by the description of her 
complete devotion and love for Kukin and all that 
he cares for, and for the timber merchant and for 
the veterinary surgeon, and even more of her suf- 
ferings when she is left alone and has no one to 
love; and finally the account of how with all the 
strength of womanly, motherly feelings (of which 


26 The Darling and Other Stories 


she has no experience in her own life) she devotes 
herself with boundless love to the future man. the 
schoolboy in the big cap. 

The author makes her love the absurd Kukin, the 
insignificant timber merchant, and the unpleasant 
veterinary surgeon, but love is no less sacred whether 
its object is a Kukin or a Spinoza, a Pascal, or a 
Schiller, and whether the objects of it change as rap- 
idly as with the Darling, or whether the object of 
it remains the same throughout the whole life. 

Some time ago I happened to read in the Novoe 
Vremya an excellent article upon woman. ‘The 
author has in this article expressed a remarkably 
clever and profound idea about woman. ‘‘ Wo- 
men,’ he says, “ are trying to show us they can do 
everything we men can do. I don’t contest it; I 
am prepared to admit that women can do every- 
thing men can do, and possibly better than men; 
but the trouble is that men cannot do anything faintly 
approaching to what women can do.” 

Yes, that is undoubtedly true, and it is true not 
only with regard to birth, nurture, and early educa- 
tion of children. Men cannot do that highest, best 
work which brings man nearest to God — the work 
of love, of complete devotion to the loved object, 
which good women have done, do, and will do so 
well and so naturally. What would become of the 
world, what would become of us men if women had 
not that faculty and did not exercise it? We could 
get on without women doctors, women telegraph 


Tolstoy’s Criticism 27 


clerks, women lawyers, women scientists, women 
writers, but life would be a sorry affair without moth- 
ers, helpers, friends, comforters, who love in men 
the best in them, and imperceptibly instil, evoke, and 
support it. There would have been no Magdalen 
with Christ, no Claire with St. Francis; there would 
have been no wives of the Dekabrists in Siberia; 
there would not have been among the Duhobors 
those wives who, instead of holding their husbands 
back, supported them in their martyrdom for truth; 
there would not have been those thousands and 
thousands of unknown women — the best of all, as 
the unknown always are—the comforters of the 
drunken, the weak, and the dissolute, who, more 
than any, need the comfort of love. That love, 
whether devoted to a Kukin or to Christ, is the chief, 
grand, unique strength of woman. 

What an amazing misunderstanding it is — all 
this so-called woman question, which, as every vul- 
gar idea is bound to do, has taken possession of the 
majority of women, and even of men. 

‘“ Woman longs to improve herself ”’— what can 
be more legitimate and just than that? 

But a woman’s work is from her very vocation 
different from man’s, and so the ideal of feminine 
perfection cannot be the same as the ideal of mas- 
culine perfection. Let us admit that we do not 
know what that ideal is; it is quite certain in any case 
that it is not the ideal of masculine perfection. And 
yet it is to the attainment of that masculine ideal 


28 The Darling and Other Stories 


that the whole of the absurd and evil activity of 
the fashionable woman movement, which is such a 
stumbling-block to woman, is directed. 

I am afraid that Chekhov was under the influence 
of that misunderstanding when he wrote ‘‘ The Dar- 
ling.” 

He, like Balaam, intended to curse, but the god 
of poetry forbade him, and commanded him to bless. 
And he did bless, and unconsciously clothed this 
sweet creature in such an exquisite radiance that she 
will always remain a type of what a woman can be 
in order to be happy herself, and to make the hap- 
piness of those with whom destiny throws her. 

What makes the story so excellent is that the ef- 
fect is unintentional. 

I learnt to ride a bicycle in a hall large enough 
to drill a division of soldiers. At the other end 
of the hall a lady was learning. I thought I must 
be careful to avoid getting into her way, and be- 
gan looking at her. And as I looked at her J be- 
gan unconsciously getting nearer and nearer to her, 
and in spite of the fact that, noticing the danger, she 
hastened to retreat, I rode down upon her and 
knocked her down — that is, I did the very opposite 
cf what I wanted to do, simply because I concen- 
trated my attention upon her. 

The same thing has happened to Chekhov, but 
in an inverse sense: he wanted to knock the Dar- 
ling down, and concentrating upon her the close 
attention of the poet, he raised her up. 








- ARIADNE 





mY iy epee 
OM tree 
* al 


A 


















_ yg ata") 


{ane 
em i 


: 
et 


ort 


* ee a tina gS. me one “ 
et a eee oes 
7S ee Fee 

fire 3 : « A ae 


Berita 
ier - 





ARIADNE 


On the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa to 
Sevastopol, a rather good-looking gentleman, with 
a little round beard, came up to me to smoke, and 
said: 

“Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? 
Whenever Germans or Englishmen get together, they 
talk about the crops, the price of wool, or their per- 
sonal affairs. But for some reason or other when 
we Russians get together we never discuss anything 
but women and abstract subjects — but especially 
women.” 

This gentleman’s face was familiar to me already. 
We had returned from abroad the evening before 
in the same train, and at Volotchisk when the lug- 
gage was being examined by the Customs, I saw him 
standing with a lady, his travelling companion, be- 
fore a perfect mountain of trunks and baskets filled 
with ladies’ clothes, and I noticed how embarrassed 
and downcast he was when he had to pay duty on 
some piece of silk frippery, and his companion pro- 
tested and threatened to make a complaint. After- 
wards, on the way to Odessa, I saw him carrying lit- 
tle pies and oranges to the ladies’ compartment. 

It was rather damp; the vessel swayed a little, 
and the ladies had retired to their cabins. 

31 


32 The Darling and Other Stories 


The gentleman with the little round beard sat 
down beside me and continued: 

“Yes, when Russians come together they dis- 
cuss nothing but abstract subjects and women. We 
are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter noth- 
ing but truths and can discuss only questions of a 
lofty order. The Russian actor does not know how 
to be funny; he acts with profundity even in a farce. 
We're just the same: when we have got to talk of 
trifles we treat them only from an exalted point of 
view. It comes from a lack of boldness, sincerity, 
and simplicity. We talk so often about women, I 
fancy, because we are dissatisfied. We take too 
ideal a view of women, and make demands out of 
all proportion with what reality can give us; we 
get something utterly different from what we want, 
and the result is dissatisfaction, shattered hopes, and 
inward suffering, and if any one is suffering, he’s 
bound to talk of it. It does not bore you to go on 
with this conversation?” 

“No, not in the least.” 

‘In that case, allow me to introduce myself,” 
said my companion, rising from his seat a little: 
“Tyan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner of a 
Botte; 450 1 oul know very well: 

He sat down and went on, looking at me with a 
genuine and friendly expression: 

‘“A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau, 
would explain these incessant conversations about 
women as a form of erotic madness, or would put 


Ariadne 33 


it down to our having been slave-owners and so on: 
I take quite a ditterent view of it. I repeat, we 
are dissatisfied because we are idealists. We want 
the creatures who bear us and our children to be 
superior to us and to everything in the world. When 
we are young we adore and poeticize those with 
whom we are in love: love and happiness with us 
are synonyms. Among us in Russia marriage with- 
out love it despised, sensuality is ridiculed and in- 
spires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed 
by those tales and novels in which women are beauti- 
ful, poetical, and exalted; and if the Russian has 
been for years in ecstasies over Raphael's Madonna, 
or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure 
you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble 
is that when we have been married or been intimate 
with a woman for some two or three years, we be- 
gin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off 
with others, and again — disappointment, again — 
repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced 
that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undevel- 
oped, cruel — in fact, far from being superior, are 
immeasurably inferior to us men. And in our dis- 
satisfaction and disappointment there is nothing left 
for us but to grumble and talk about what we’ve 
been so cruelly deceived in.” 

While Shamohin was talking I noticed that the 
Russian language and our Russian surroundings gave 
him great pleasure. This was probably because he 
had been very homesick abroad. ‘Though he praised 


34 The Darling and Other Stories 


the Russians and ascribed to them a rare idealism, 
he did not disparage foreigners, and that I put down 
to his credit. It could be seen, too, that there was 
some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to talk 
more of himself than of women, and that I was in 
for a long story in the nature of a confession. And 
when we had asked for a bottle of wine and had each 
of us drunk a glass, this was how he did in fact be- 
gin: 

‘“T remember in a novel of Weltmann’s some 
one says, ‘So that’s the story!’ and some one else 
answers, ‘No, that’s not the story — that’s only 
the introduction to the story.’ In the same way 
what I’ve said so far is only the introduction; what 
I really want to tell you is my own love story. Ex- 
cuse me, I must ask you again; it won’t bore you to 
listen?” 

I told him it would not, and he went on: 


The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow prov- 
ince in one of its northern districts. The scenery 
there, I must tell you, is exquisite. Our homestead 
is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the 
water chatters noisily day and night: imagine a big 
old garden, neat flower-beds, beehives, a kitchen- 
garden, and below it a river with leafy willows, 
which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a 
lustreless look as though they had turned grey; and 
on the other side a meadow, and beyond the meadow 
on the upland a terrible, dark pine forest. In that 


Ariadne 35 


forest delicious, reddish agarics grow in endless pro- 
fusion, and elks still live in its deepest recesses. 
When I am nailed up in my coffin I believe I shall 
still dream of those early mornings, you know, when 
the sun hurts your eyes: or the wonderful spring 
evenings when the nightingales and the landrails call 
in the garden and beyond the garden, and sounds of 
the harmonica float across from the village, while 
they play the piano indoors and the stream babbles 
. . » when there is such music, in fact, that one — 
wants at the same time to cry and to sing aloud. 

We have not much arable land, but our pasture 
makes up for it, and with the forest yields about 
two thousand roubles a year. I am the only son 
of my father; we are both modest persons, and with 
my father’s pension that sum was amply sufficient 
for us. 

The first three years after finishing at the univer- 
sity I spent in the country, looking after the estate 
and constantly expecting to be elected on some local 
assembly; but what was most important, I was vio- 
lently in love with an extraordinarily beautiful and 
fascinating girl. She was the sister of our neigh- 
bour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner who had on 
his estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches, lightning 
conductors, a fountain in the courtyard, and at the 
same time not a farthing in his pocket. He did 
nothing and knew how to do nothing. He was as 
flabby as though he had been made of boiled turnip; 
he used to doctor the peasants by homeopathy and 


36 The Darling and Other Stories 


was interested in spiritualism. He was, however, 
a man of great delicacy and mildness, and by no 
means a fool, but I have no fondness for these gen- 
tlemen who converse with spirits and cure peasant 
women by magnetism. In the first place, the ideas 
of people who are not intellectually free are always 
in a muddle, and it’s extremely difficult to talk to 
them; and, secondly, they usually love no one, and 
have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism 
has an unpleasant effect on sensitive people. I did 
not care for his appearance either. He was tall, 
stout, white-skinned, with a little head, little shining 
eyes, and chubby white fingers. He did not shake 
hands, but kneaded one’s hands in his. And he was 
always apologising. If he asked for anything it 
was ‘Excuse me”’; if he gave you anything it was 
‘“* Excuse me’ too. 

As for his sister, she was a character out of a 
different opera. I must explain that I had not been 
acquainted with the Kotlovitches in my childhood and 
early youth, for my father had been a professor at 
N., and we had for many years lived away. When 
I did make their acquaintance the girl was twenty- 
two, had left school long before, and had spent two 
or three years in Moscow with a wealthy aunt who 
brought her out into society. When I was intro- 
duced and first had to talk to her, what struck me 
most of all was her rare and beautiful name — 
Ariadne. It suited her so wonderfully! She was 
a brunette, very thin, very slender, supple, elegant, 


Ariadne 39 


and extremely graceful, with refined and exceedingly 
noble features. Her eyes were shining, too, but her 
_brother’s shone with a cold sweetness, mawkish as 
- sugar-candy, while hers had the glow of youth, proud 
and beautiful. She conquered me on the first day 
of our acquaintance, and indeed it was inevitable. 
_ My first impression was so overwhelming that to 
this day I cannot get rid of my illusions; I am still 
tempted to imagine that nature had some grand, 
marvellous design when she created that girl. 
Ariadne’s voice, her walk, her hat, even her foot- 
prints on the sandy bank where she used to angle 
for gudgeon, filled me with delight and a passionate 
hunger for life. I judged of her spiritual being 
from her lovely face and lovely figure, and every 
word, every smile of Ariadne’s bewitched me, con- 
quered me and forced me to believe in the loftiness 
of her soul. She was friendly, ready to talk, gay 
and simple in her manners. She had a poetic be-— 
lief in God, made poetic reflections about death, and 
there was such a wealth of varying shades in her 
spiritual organisation that even her faults seemed 
in her to carry with them peculiar, charming qual- 
ities. Suppose she wanted a new horse and had no 
money — what did that matter? Something might 
be sold or pawned, or if the steward swore that noth- — 
ing could possibly be sold or pawned, the iron roofs 
might be torn off the lodges and taken to the fac- 
tory, or at the very busiest time the farm-horses 
might be driven to the market and sold there for 


38 The Darling and Other Stories 


next to nothing. These unbridled desires reduced 
the whole household to despair at times, but she ex- 
pressed them with such refinement that everything 
was forgiven her; all things were permitted her as 
to a goddess or to Cxsar’s wife. My love was pa- 
thetic and was soon noticed by every one — my fa- 
ther, the neighbours, and the peasants — and they all 
sympathised with me. When I stood the workmen 
vodka, they would bow and say: ‘‘ May the Kotlo- 
vitch young lady be your bride, please God!” 

And Ariadne herself knew that I loved her. She 
would often ride over on horseback or drive in the 
char-a-banc to see us, and would spend whole days 
with me and my father. She made great friends with 
the old man, and he even taught her to bicycle, which 
was his favourite amusement. 

I remember helping her to get on the bicycle one 
evening, and she looked so lovely that I felt as though 
I were burning my hands when I touched her. I 
shuddered with rapture, and when the two of them, 
my old father and she, both looking so handsome 
and elegant, bicycled side by side along the main 
road, a black horse ridden by the steward dashed 
aside on meeting them, and it seemed to me that it 
dashed aside because it too was overcome by her 
beauty. My love, my worship, touched Ariadne and 
softened her; she had a passionate longing to be 
captivated like me and to respond with the same love. 
It was so poetical! 

But she was incapable of really loving as I did, 


Ariadne 39 


for she was cold and already somewhat corrupted. 
There was a demon in her, whispering to her day 
and night that she was enchanting, adorable; and, 
having no definite idea for what object she was 
created, or for what purpose life had been given 
her, she never pictured herself in the future except 
as very wealthy and distinguished; she had visions 
of balls, races, liveries, of sumptuous drawing-rooms, 
of a salon of her own, and of a perfect swarm of 
counts, princes, ambassadors, celebrated painters and 
artists, all of them adoring her and in ecstasies over 
her beauty and her dresses. . 

This thirst for personal success, and this continual 
concentration of the mind in one direction, makes 
people cold, and Ariadne was cold — to me, to na- 
ture, and to music. Meanwhile time was passing, 
and still there were no ambassadors on the scene. 
Ariadne went on living with her brother, the spirit- 
ualist: things went from bad to worse, so that she 
had nothing to buy hats and dresses with, and had 
to resort to all sorts of tricks and dodges to conceal 
her poverty. 

As luck would have it, a certain Prince Maktuev, 
a wealthy man but an utterly insignificant person, 
had paid his addresses to her when she was living 
at her aunt’s in Moscow. She had refused him, 
point-blank. But now she was fretted by the worm 
of repentance that she had refused him; just as a 
peasant pouts with repulsion at a mug of kvass with 
cockroaches in it but yet drinks it, so she frowned 


40 The Darling and Other Stories 


disdainfully at the recollection of the prince, and 
yet she would say to me: ‘‘Say what you like, 
there is something inexplicable, fascinating, in a 
is arene 

She dreamed of a title, of a brilliant position, 
and at the same time she did not want to let me 
go. However one may dream of ambassadors one’s 
heart is not a stone, and one has wistful feelings 
for one’s youth. Ariadne tried to fall in love, made 
a show of being in love, and even swore that she 
loved me. But I am a highly strung and sensitive 
man; when I am loved I feel it even at a distance, 
without vows and assurances; at once I felt as it 
were a coldness in the air, and when she talked 
to me of love, it seemed to me as though I were 
listening to the singing of a metal nightingale. 
Ariadne was herself aware that she was lacking in 
something. She was vexed and more than once I 
saw her cry. Another time —can you imagine it? 
— all of a sudden she embraced me and kissed me. 
It happened in the evening on the river-bank, and I 
saw by her eyes that she did not love me, but was 
embracing me from curiosity, to test herself and to 
see what came of it. And I felt dreadful. I took 
her hands and said to her in despair: ‘* These ca- 
resses without love cause me suffering!” 

‘What a queer fellow you are!” she said with 
annoyance, and walked away. 

Another year or two might have passed, and in 
all probability I should have married her, and so 


Ariadne AI 


my story would have ended, but fate was pleased 
to arrange our romance differently. It happened 
that a new personage appeared on our horizon. 
_ Ariadne’s brother had a visit from an old university 
friend called Mihail Ivanitch Lubkov, a charming 
man of whom coachmen and footmen used to say: 
‘*‘ An entertaining gentleman.”” He was a man of 
medium height, lean and bald, with a face like a 
good-natured bourgeois, not interesting, but pale 
and presentable, with a stiff, well-kept moustache, 
with a neck like gooseskin, and a big Adam’s apple. 
He used to wear pince-nez on a wide black ribbon, 
lisped, and could not pronounce either r or 1. He 
was always in good spirits, everything amused 
him. 

He had made an exceedingly foolish marriage 
at twenty, and had acquired two houses in Moscow 
as part of his wife’s dowry. He began doing them 
up and building a bath-house, and was completely 
ruined. Now his wife and four children lodged in 
Oriental Buildings in great poverty, and he had to 
support them — and this amused him. He was thir- 
ty-six and his wife was by now forty-two, and that, 
too, amused him. His mother, a conceited, sulky 
personage, with aristocratic pretensions, despised his 
wife and lived apart with a perfect menagerie of 
cats and dogs, and he had to allow her seventy-five 
roubles a month also; he was, too, a man of taste, 
liked lunching at the Slavyansky Bazaar and dining 
at the Iiermitage; he needed a great deal of money, 


42 The Darling and Other Stories 


but his uncle only allowed him two thousand roubles 
a year, which was not enough, and for days together 
he would run about Moscow with his tongue out, as 
the saying is, looking for some one to borrow from 
— and this, too, amused him. He had come to Kot- 
lovitch to find in the lap of nature, as he said, a rest 
from family life. At dinner, at supper, and on our 
walks, he talked about his wife, about his mother, 
about his creditors, about the bailiffs, and laughed 
at them; he laughed at himself and assured us that, 
thanks to his talent for borrowing, he had made 
a great number of agreeable acquaintances. He 
laughed without ceasing and we laughed too. More- 
over, in his company we spent our time differently. 
I was more inclined to quiet, so to say idyllic pleas- 
ures; I liked fishing, evening walks, gathering mush- 
rooms; Lubkov preferred picnics, fireworks, hunt- 
ing. He used to get up picnics three times a week, 
and Ariadne, with an earnest and inspired face, used 
to write a list of oysters, champagne, sweets, and 
used to send me into Moscow to get them, without 
inquiring, of course, whether I had money. And at 
the picnics there were toasts and laughter, and again 
mirthful descriptions of how old his wife was, what 
fat lap-dogs his mother had, and what charming peo- 
ple his créditors were... ... 

Lubkov was fond of nature, but he regarded it 
as something long familiar and at the same time, 
in reality, infinitely beneath himself and created for 
his pleasure. He would sometimes stand still be- 


Ariadne 43 


fore some magnificent landscape and say: “It 
would be nice to have tea here.” 

One day, seeing Ariadne walking in the distance 
with a parasol, he nodded towards her and said: 

‘“ She’s thin, and that’s what I like; I don’t like 
fat women.” 

This made me wince. I asked him not to speak 
like that about women before me. He looked at 
me in surprise and said: 

‘What is there amiss in my liking thin women 
and not caring for fat ones?” 

I made no answer. Afterwards, being in very 
good spirits and a trifle elevated, he said: 

“T’ve noticed Ariadne Grigoryevna likes you. 
I can’t understand why you don’t go in and win.” 

His words made me feel uncomfortable, and with 
some embarrassment I told him how I looked at 
love and women. 

“I don’t know,” he sighed; ‘to my thinking, a 
woman's a woman and a man’s a man. Ariadne 
Grigoryevna may be poetical and exalted, as you say, 
but it doesn’t follow that she must be superior to 
the laws of nature. You see for yourself that she 
has reached the age when she must have a husband 
or a lover. I respect women as much as you do, 
but I don’t think certain relations exclude poetry. 
Poetry’s one thing and love is another. It’s just 
the same as it is in farming. The beauty of na- 
ture is one thing and the income from your forests 
or fields is quite another.”’ 


44 The Darling and Other Stories 


When Ariadne and I were fishing, Lubkov would 
lie on the sand close by and make fun of me, or lec- 
ture me on the conduct of life. 

‘“T wonder, my dear sir, how you can live with- 
out a love affair,” he would say. ‘‘ You are young, 
handsome, interesting —in fact, you’re a man not 
to be sniffed at, yet you live like a monk. Och! I 
can’t stand these fellows who are old at twenty- 
eight! I’m nearly ten years older than you are, and 
yet which of us is the younger? Ariadne Grigory- 
evna, which?” 

‘You, of course,’’ Ariadne answered him. 

And when he was bored with our silence and 
the attention with which we stared at our floats 
he went home, and she said, looking at me angrily: 

‘You're really not a man, but a mush, God for- 
giveme! A man ought to be able to be carried away 
by his feelings, he ought to be able to be mad, to 
make mistakes, to suffer! A woman will forgive 
you audacity and insolence, but she will never for- 
give your reasonableness!” 

She was angry in earnest, and went on: 

‘*’To succeed, a man must be resolute and bold. 
Lubkov is not so handsome as you are, but he is 
more interesting. He will always succeed with 
women because he’s not like you; he’s a man. . . .” 

And there was actually a note of exasperation in 
her voice. 

One day at supper she began saying, not address- 
ing, me that if she were a man she would not stag- 


Ariadne 45 


nate in the country, but would travel, would spend 
the winter somewhere aboard —in Italy, for in- 
stance. Oh, Italy! At this point my father uncon- 
sciously poured oil on the flames; he began telling 
us at length about Italy, how splendid it was there, 
the exquisite scenery, the museums. Ariadne sud- 
denly conceived a burning desire to go to Italy. She 
positively brought her fist down on the table and 
her eyes flashed as she said: ‘I must go!” 

After that came conversations every day about 
Italy: how splendid it would be in Italy — ah, Italy! 
— oh, Italy! And when Ariadne looked at me over 
her shoulder, from her cold and obstinate expres- 
sion I saw that in her dreams she had already con- 
quered Italy with all its salons, celebrated foreigners 
and tourists, and there was no holding her back now. 
I advised her to wait a little, to put off her tour for 
a year or two, but she frowned disdainfully and said: 

‘ You’re as prudent as an old woman!” 

Lubkov was in favour of the tour. He said it 
could be done very cheaply, and he, too, would go 
to Italy and have a rest there from family life. 

I behaved, I confess, as naively as a schoolboy. 
Not from jealousy, but from a foreboding of some- 
thing terrible and extraordinary, I tried as far as 
possible not to leave them alone together, and they 
made fun of me. For instance, when I went in they 
would pretend they had just been kissing one an- 
other, and so on. 

But lo and behold, one fine morning, her plump, 


46 The Darling and Other Stories 


white-skinned brother, the spiritualist, made his ap- 
pearance and expressed his desire to speak to me 
alone. 

He was a man without will; in spite of his educa- 
tion and his delicacy he could never resist reading 
another person’s letter, if it lay before him on the 
table. And now he admitted that he had by chance 
read a letter of Lubkov’s to Ariadne. 

‘From that letter I learned that she is very 
shortly going abroad. My dear fellow, I am very 
much upset! [Explain it to me for goodness’ sake. 
I can make nothing of it!” 

As he said this he breathed hard, breathing 
straight in my face and smelling of boiled beef. 

‘“Excuse me for revealing the secret of this let- 
ter to you, but you are Ariadne’s friend, she respects 
you. Perhaps you know something of it. She 
wants to go away, but with whom? Mr. Lubkov is 
proposing to go with her. Excuse me, but this is 
very strange of Mr. Lubkov; he is a married man, 
he has children, and yet he is making a declaration 
of love; he is writing to Ariadne ‘ darling.’ Excuse 
me, but it is so strange!” 

I turned cold all over; my hands and feet went 
numb and I felt an ache in my chest, as if a three- 
cornered stone had been driven into it. Kotlovitch 
sank helplessly into an casy-chair, and his hands fell 
limply at his sides. 

‘* What can I do?” I inquired. 

“ Persuade ‘her... . Impress her mimo eae 


Ariadne 47 


Just consider, what is Lubkov to her? Is he a match 
for her? Oh, good God! How awful it is, how 
awful it is!’’ he went on, clutching his head. ‘‘ She 
has had such splendid offers — Prince Maktuev and 

. and others. The prince adores her, and only 
last Wednesday week his late grandfather, [larion, 
declared positively that Ariadne would be his wife 
— positively! His grandfather [larion is dead, but 
he is a wonderfully intelligent person; we call up his 
spirit every day.” 

After this conversation I lay awake all night and 
thought of shooting myself. In the morning I wrote 
five letters and tore them all up. Then I sobbed in 
the barn. Then I took a sum of money from my 
father and set off for the Caucasus without saying 
good-bye. 

Of course, a woman’s a woman and a man’s a 
man, but can all that be as simpie in our day as it 
was before the Flood, and can it be that I, a culti- 
vated man endowed with a complex spiritual organ- 
isation, ought to explain the intense attraction I feel 
towards a woman simply by the fact that her bodily 
formation is different from mine? Oh, how awful 
that would be! I want to believe that in his strug- 
gle with nature the genius of man has struggled 
with physical love too, as with an enemy, and that, 
if he has not conquered it, he has at least succeeded 
in tangling it in a net-work of illusions of brother- 
hood and love; and for me, at any rate, it is no 
longer a simple instinct of my animal nature as with 


48 The Darling and Other Stories 


a dog or a toad, but is real love, and every embrace 
is spiritualised by a pure impulse of the heart and 
respect for the woman. In reality, a disgust for 
the animal instinct has been trained for ages in 
hundreds of generations; it is inherited by me in 
my blood and forms part of my nature, and if I poet- 
ize love, is not that as natural and inevitable in our 
day as my ears’ not being able to move and my 
not being covered with fur? I fancy that’s how the 
majority of civilised people look at it, so that the 
absence of the moral, poetical element in love is 
treated in these days as a phenomenon, as a sign of 
atavism; they say it is a symptom of degeneracy, of 
many forms of insanity. It is true that, in poetizing 
love, we assume in those we love qualities that are 
lacking in them, and that is a source of continual mis- 
takes and continual miseries for us. But to my 
thinking it is better, even so; that is, it is better to” 
suffer than to find complacency on the basis of woman 
being woman and man being man. 

In Tiflis I received a letter from my father. He 
wrote that Ariadne Grigoryevna had on such a day 
gone abroad, intending to spend the whole winter 
away. A month later I returned home. It was by 
now autumn. Every week Ariadne sent my father 
extremely interesting letters on scented paper, writ- 
ten in an excellent literary style. It is my opinion 
that every woman can be a writer. Ariadne de- 
scribed in great detail how it had not been easy for 
her to make it up with her aunt and induce the lat- 


Ariadne AQ 


ter to give her a thousand roubles for the journey, 
and what a long time she had spent in Moscow try- 


ing to find an old lady, a distant relation, in order to 


persuade her to go with her. Such a profusion of 
detail suggested fiction, and I realised, of course, that 
she had no chaperon with her. 

Soon afterwards I, too, had a letter from her, 
also scented and literary. She wrote that she had 
missed me, missed my beautiful, intelligent, loving 
eyes. She reproached me affectionately for wast- 
ing my youth, for stagnating in the country when | 
might, like her, be living in paradise under the palms, 
breathing the fragrance of the orange-trees. And 
she signed herself ‘‘ Your forsaken Ariadne.” Two 
days later came another letter in the same style, 
signed ‘‘ Your forgotten Ariadne.” My mind was 
confused. I loved her passionately, I dreamed of 
her every night, and then this “ your forsaken,” 
‘““vour forgotten ”’— what did it mean? What was 
it for? And then the dreariness of the country, the 
long evenings, the disquieting thoughts of Lubkov. 
. . . The uncertainty tortured me, and poisoned my 
days and nights; it became unendurable. I could not 
bear it and went abroad. 

Ariadne summoned me to Abbazzia. I arrived 
there on a bright warm day after rain; the rain-drops 
were still hanging on the trees and glistening on the 
huge, barrack-like dépendance where Ariadne and 
Lubkov were living. 

They were not at home. I went into the park; 


50 The Darling and Other Stories 


wandered about the avenues, then sat down. An 
Austrian General, with his hands behind him, walked 
past me, with red stripes on his trousers such as 
our generals wear. A baby was wheeled by in a 
perambulator and the wheels squeaked on the damp 
sand. A decrepit old man with jaundice passed, 
then a crowd of Englishwomen, a Catholic priest, 
then the Austrian General again. <A military band, 
only just arrived from Fiume, with glittering brass 
instruments, sauntered by to the bandstand — they 
began playing. 

Have you ever been at Abbazzia? It’s a filthy 
little Slav town with only one street, which stinks, 
and in which one can’t walk after rain without 
goloshes. I had read so much and always with such 
intense feeling about this earthly paradise that when 
afterwards, holding up my trousers, I cautiously 
crossed the narrow street, and in my ennui bought 
some hard pears from an old peasant woman who, 
recognising me as a Russian, said: ‘‘ [cheeteery ” 
for ‘“‘tchetyry’’ (four) —‘‘ davadtsat” for “ dva- 
_dtsat”’? (twenty), and when I wondered in perplex- 
ity where to go and what to do here, and when I 
inevitably met Russians as disappointed as I was, I 
began to feel vexed and ashamed. There is a calm 
bay there full of steamers and boats with coloured 
sails. From there I could see Fiume and the dis- 
tant islands covered with lilac mist, and it would 
have been picturesque if the view over the bay had 


Ariadne 51 


not been hemmed in by the hotels and their dépend- 
ances — buildings in an absurd, trivial style of archi- 
tecture, with which the whole of that green shore 
has been covered by greedy money grubbers, so that 
for the most part you see nothing in this little para- 
dise but windows, terraces, and little squares with 
tables and waiters’ black coats. There is a park 
such as you find now in every watering-place abroad. 
And the dark, motionless, silent foliage of the palms, 
and the bright yellow sand in the avenue, and the 
bright green seats, and the glitter of the braying mili- 
tary horns —all this sickened me in ten minutes! 
And yet one is obliged for some reason to spend ten 
days, ten weeks, there! 

Having been dragged reluctantly from one of 
these watering-places to another, I have been more 
and more struck by the inconvenient and niggardly 
life led by the wealthy and well-fed, the dulness and 
feebleness of their imagination, the lack of boldness 
in their tastes and desires. And how much happier 
are those tourists, old and young, who, not having 
the money to stay in hotels, live where they can, 
admire the view of the sea from the tops of the 
mountains, lying on the green grass, walk instead of 
riding, see the forests and villages at close quarters, 
observe the customs of the country, listen to its songs, 
fall in love with its women. . 

While I was sitting in the park, it began to get 
dark, and in the twilight my Ariadne appeared, ele- 


52 The Darling and Other Stories 


gant and dressed like a princess; after her walked 
Lubkov, wearing a new loose-fitting suit, bought 
probably in Vienna. 7 

“Why are you cross with me?” he was saying. 
‘“ What have I done to you?” 

Seeing me, she uttered a cry of joy, and probably, 
if we had not been in the park, would have thrown 
herself on my neck. She pressed my hands warmly 
and laughed; and I laughed too and almost cried 
with emotion. Questions followed, of the village, 
of my father, whether I had seen her brother, and 
so on. She insisted on my looking her straight in 
the face, and asked if I remembered the gudgeon, 
our little quarrels, the picnics. . . 

‘“ How nice it all was really!” she sighed. ‘‘ But 
we're not having a slow time here either. We have 
a great many acquaintances, my dear, my best of 
friends! To-morrow I will introduce you to a 
Russian family here, but please buy yourself another 
hat.’ She scrutinised me and frowned. “ Abbaz- 
zia is not the country,” she said; “ here one must 
be comme il faut.” 

Then we went to the restaurant. Ariadne was 
laughing and mischievous all the time; she kept call- 
ing me “dear,” “good,” “clever,” and*secmed ag 
though she could not believe her eyes that I was 
with her. We sat on till eleven o’clock, and parted 
very well satisfied both with the supper and with 
each other. 

Next day Ariadne presented me to the Russian 





Ariadne 53 


family as: “ The son of a distinguished professor 
_whose estate is next to ours.” 

_ She talked to this family about nothing but es- 
tates and crops, and kept appealing to me. She 
wanted to appear to be a very wealthy landowner, 
and did, in fact, succeed in doing so. Her manner 
_ was superb like that of a real aristocrat, which in- 
deed she was by birth. 

“But what a person my aunt is!” she said sud- 
_ denly, looking at me with a smile. ‘‘ We had a 
slight tiff, and she has bolted off to Meran. What 
do you say to that?” 

Afterwards when we were walking in the park I 
asked her: 

“What aunt were you talking of just now? 
Pe What auitis that?” 

‘That was a saving lie,’ laughed Ariadne. 
“They must not know I’m without a chaperon.” 

After a moment’s silence she came closer to me 
and said: 

‘““ My dear, my dear, do be friends with Lubkov. 
He is so unhappy! His wife and mother are simply 
aw ful.”’ 

She used the formal mode of address in speaking 
to Lubkov, and when she was going up to bed she 
said good-night to him exactly as she did to me, 
and their rooms were on different floors. All this 
made me hope that it was all nonsense, and that there 
was no sort of love affair between them, and I felt 
at ease when I met him. And when one day he 





ae tt ote Os ee 


54 The Darling and Other Stories 


asked me for the loan of three hundred roubles, I 
gave it to him with the greatest pleasure. 

Every day we spent in enjoying ourselves and in 
nothing but enjoying ourselves; we strolled in the 
park, we ate, we drank. Every day there were con- 
versations with the Russian family. By degrees I 
got used to the fact that if I went into the park I 
should be sure to meet the old man with jaundice, 
the Catholic priest, and the Austrian General, who 
always carried a pack of little cards, and wherever 
it was possible sat down and played patience, 
nervously twitching his shoulders. And the band 
played the same thing over and over again. 

At home in the country I used to feel ashamed to 
meet the peasants when I was fishing or on a picnic 
party on a working day; here too I was ashamed at 
the sight of the footmen, the coachmen, and the 
workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they 
were looking at me and thinking: ‘ Why are you 
doing nothing?” And I was conscious of this feel- 
ing of shame every day from morning to night. It 
was a strange, unpleasant, monotonous time; it was 
only varied by Lubkov’s borrowing from me now 
a hundred, now fifty guldens, and being suddenly 
revived by the money as a morphia-maniac is by 
morphia, beginning to laugh loudly at his wife, at 
himself, at his creditors. 

At last it began to be rainy and cold. We went 
to Italy, and I telegraphed to my father begging 
him for mercy’s sake to send me eight hundred 


Ariadne 55 


roubles to Rome. We stayed in Venice, in Bologna, 
in Florence, and in every town invariably put up 
at an expensive hotel, where we were charged sepa- 
rately for lights, and for service, and for heating, 
and for bread at lunch, and for the right of having 
dinner by ourselves. We ate enormously. In the 
morning they gave us café complet; at one o’clock 
lunch: meat, fish, some sort of omelette, cheese, 
fruits, and wine. At six o’clock dinner of eight 
courses with long intervals, during which we drank 
beer and wine. At nine o’clock tea. At midnight 
Ariadne would declare she was hungry, and ask for 
ham and boiled eggs. We would eat to keep her 
company. 

In the intervals between meals we used to rush 
about the museums and exhibitions in continual anx- 
iety for fear we should |e late for dinner or lunch. 
I was bored at the sight of the pictures; I longed to 
be at home to rest; I was exhausted, looked about 
for a chair and hypocritically repeated after other 
people: ‘‘ How exquisite, what atmosphere!” 
Like overfed boa constrictors, we noticed only the 
most glaring objects. The shop windows hypno- 
tised us; we went into ecstasies over imitation 
brooches and bought a mass of useless trumpery. 

The same thing happened in Rome, where it 
rained and there was a cold wind. After a heavy 
lunch we went to look at St. Peter’s, and thanks to 
our replete condition and perhaps the bad weather, 
it made no sort of impression on us, and detecting 


56 The Darling and Other Stories 


in each other an indifference to art, we almost quar- 


relled. 

The money came from my father. I went to get 
it, I remember, in the morning. Lubkov went with 
me. 


‘“The present cannot be full and happy when | 


one has a past,” said he. ‘‘I have heavy burdens 
left on me by the past. However, if only I get the 
money, it’s no great matter, but if not, I’m in a 
fix. Would you believe it, [ have only eight francs 
left, yet I must send my wife a hundred and my 
mother another. And we must live here too. 
Ariadne’s like a child; she won’t enter into the posi- 
tion, and flings away money like a duchess. Why 
did she buy a watch yesterday? And, tell me, what 
object is there in our going on playing at being good 
children? Why, our hiding our relations from the 
servants and our friends costs us from ten to fifteen 
francs a day, as I have to have a separate room. 
What’s the object of it?” 

I felt as though a sharp stone had been turned 
round in my chest. There was no uncertainty now; 
it was all clesr to me. I turned cold all over, 
and at once made a resolution to give up seeing them, 
to run away from them, to go home at once... . 

“To get on terms with a woman is easy enough,” 
Lubkov went on. “ You have only to undress her; 
but afterwards what a bore it is, what a silly busi- 
ness!” 


Ariadne 57 


When I counted over the money I received he 
said: 

‘Tf you don’t lend me a thousand francs, | am 
faced with complete ruin. Your money is the only 
resource left to me.” 

I gave him the money, and he at once revived 
and began laughing about his uncle, a queer fish, 
who could never keep his address secret from his 
wife. When I reached the hotel I packed and paid 
my bill. I had still to say good-bye to Ariadne. 

I knocked at the door. 

7 ratrez |” 

In her room was the usual morning disorder: tea- 
things on the table, an unfinished roll, an eggshell; 
a strong overpowering reek of scent. The bed had 
not been made, and it was evident that two had slept 
in it. 

Ariadne herself had only just got out of bed and 
was now with her hair down in a flannel dressing- 
jacket. 

I said good-morning to her, and then sat in si- 
lence for a minute while she tried to put her hair 
tidy, and then I asked her, trembling all over: 

Wig ..4 2 why << did: you send for ‘me 
here" 

Evidently she guessed what I was thinking; she 
took me by the hand and said: 

‘‘ T want you to be here, you are so pure.” 

I felt ashamed of my emotion, of my trembling. 


58 The Darling and Other Stories 


And I was afraid I might begin sobbing, too! I 
went out without saying another word, and within 
an hour I was sitting in the train. All the journey, 
for some reason, I imagined Ariadne with child, and 
she seemed disgusting to me, and all the women I 
saw in the trains and at the stations looked to me, 
for some reason, as if they too were with child, and 
they too seemed disgusting and pitiable. I was in 
the position of a greedy, passionate miser who 
should suddenly discover that all his gold coins were 
false. ‘he pure, gracious images which my imag- 
ination, warmed by love, had cherished for so long, 
my plans, my hopes, my memories, my ideas of love 
and of woman — all now were jeering and putting 
out their tongues at me. “ Ariadne,” I kept asking 
with horror, “that young, intellectual, extraor- 
dinarily beautiful girl, the daughter of a senator, 
carrying on an intrigue with such an ordinary, unin- 
teresting vulgarian? But why should she not love 
Lubkov?”’ I answered myself. ‘‘ In what is he in- 
ferior to me? Oh, let her love any one she likes, 
but why lie to me? But why is she bound to be open 
with me?’? And so I went on over and over again 
till I was stupefied. 

t was cold in the train; I was travelling first 
class, but even so there were three on a side, there 
were no double windows, the outer door opened 
straight into the compartment, and I felt as though 
T were in the stocks, cramped, abandoned, pitiful, 
and my legs were fearfully numb, and at the same 


Ariadne 59 


time I kept recalling how fascinating she had been 
that morning in her dressing-jacket and with her hair 
down, and I was suddenly overcome by such acute 
jealousy that I leapt up in anguish, so that my neigh- 
bours stared at me in wonder and positive alarm. 

At home I found deep snow and twenty degrees 
of frost. I’m fond of the winter; I’m fond of it 
because at that time, even in the hardest frosts, it’s 
particularly snug at home. It’s pleasant to put on 
one’s fur jacket and felt overboots on a clear frosty 
day, to do something in the garden or in the yard, 
or to read in a well warmed room, to sit in my fa- 
ther’s study before the open fire, to wash in my coun- 
try bath-house. . . . Only if there is no mother in 
the house, no sister and no children, it is somehow 
dreary on winter evenings, and they seem extraor- 
dinarily long and quiet. And the warmer and 
snugger it is, the more acutely is this lack felt. In 
the winter when I came back from abroad, the eve- 
nings were endlessly long, I was intensely depressed, 
so depressed that I could not even read; in the day- 
time I was coming and going, clearing away the snow 
in the garden or feeding the chickens and the calves, 
but in the evening it was all up with me. 

I had never cared for visitors before, but now I 
was glad of them, for I knew there was sure to be 
talk of Ariadne. Kotlovitch, the spiritualist, used 
often to come to talk about his sister, and sometimes 
he brought with him his friend Prince Maktuev, who 
was as much in love with Ariadne as I was. To 


60 The Darling and Other Stories 


sit in Ariadne’s room, to finger the keys of her piano, 
to look at her music was a necessity for the prince 
— he could not live without it; and the spirit of his 
grandfather Ilarion was still predicting that sooner 
or later she would be his wife. The prince usually 
stayed a long time with us, from lunch to midnight, 
saying nothing all the time; in silence he would drink 
two or three bottles of beer, and from time to time, 
to show that he too was taking part in the conversa- 
tion, he would laugh an abrupt, melancholy, foolish 
laugh. Before going home he would always take 
me aside and ask me in an undertone: ‘‘ When 
did you see Ariadne Grigoryevna last? Was she 
quite well? I suppose she’s not tired of being out 
theres 

Spring came on. There was the harrowing to do 
and then the sowing of spring corn and clover. I 
was sad, but there was the feeling of spring. One 
longed to accept the inevitable. Working in the 
fields and listening to the larks, I asked myself: 
‘“Couldn’t I have done with this question of personal 
happiness once and for all? Couldn’t I lay aside 
my fancy and marry a simple peasant girl?” 

Suddenly when we were at our very busiest, I 
got a letter with the Italian stamp, and the clover 
and the beehives and the calves and the peasant girl 
all floated away like smoke. This time Ariadne 
wrote that she was profoundly, infinitely unhappy. 
She reproached me for not holding cut a helping 
hand to her, for looking down upon her from the 


Ariadne 61 


heights of my virtue and deserting her at the mo- 
ment of danger. All this was written in a large, 
nervous handwriting with blots and smudges, and it 
was evident that she wrote in haste and distress. In 
conclusion she besought me to come and save her. 
Again my anchor was hauled up and I was carried 
away. Ariadne was in Rome. I arrived late in the 
evening, and when she saw me, she sobbed and threw 
herself on my neck. She had not changed at all that 
winter, and was just as young and charming. We 
had supper together and afterwards drove about 
Rome until dawn, and all the time she kept telling 
me about her doings. I asked where Lubkov was. 

‘Don’t remind me of that creature!”’ she cried. 
‘He is loathsome and disgusting to me!” 

“ But I thought you loved him,” I said. 

“Never,” she said. ‘* At first he struck me as 
original and aroused my pity, that was all. He is 
insolent and takes a woman by storm. And that’s 
attractive. But we won't talk about him. That is 
a melancholy page in my life. He has gone to Rus- 
sia to get money. Serve him right! I told him not 
to dare to come back.” 

She was living then, not at an hotel, but in a 
private lodging of two rooms which she had deco- 
rated in her own taste, frigidly and luxuriously. 
After Lubkov had gone away she had borrowed from 
her acquaintances about five thousand francs, and 
my arrival certainly was the one salvation for her. 
I had reckoned on taking her back to the country, 


62 The Darling and Other Stories 


but I did not succeed in that. She was homesick 
for her native place, but her recollections of the pov- 
erty she had been through there, of privations, of 
the rusty roof on her brother’s house, roused a shud- 
der of disgust, and when I suggested going home to 
her, she squeezed my hands convulsively and said: 

‘**'No, no, I shall die of boredom there! ”’ 

Then my love entered upon its final phase. 

‘‘ Be the darling that you used to be; love me a 
little,” said Ariadne, bending over to me. ‘“‘ You're 
sulky and prudent, you’re afraid to yield to im- 
pulse, and keep thinking of consequences, and that’s 
dull. Come, I beg you, I beseech you, be nice to 
me! ... My pure one, my holy one, my dear one, 
I love you so!” 

I became her lover. For a month anyway I was 
like a madman, conscious of nothing but rapture. 
To hold in one’s arms a young and lovely body, with 
bliss to feel her warmth every time one waked up 
from sleep, and to remember that she was there — 
she, my Ariadne! — oh, it was not easy to get used 
to that! But yet I did get used to it, and by degrees 
became capable of reflecting on. my new position. 
First of all, I realised, as before, that Ariadne did 
not love me. But she wanted to be really in love, 
she was afraid of solitude, and, above all, I was 
healthy, young, vigorous; she was sensual, like all 
cold people, as a rule-—and we both made a show 
of being united by a passionate, mutual love. After- 
wards I realised something else, too. 


Ariadne 63 


We stayed in Rome, in Naples, in Florence; we 
went to Paris, but there we thought it cold and went 
back to Italy. We introduced ourselves everywhere 
as husband and wife, wealthy landowners. People 
readily made our acquaintance and Ariadne had great 
social success everywhere. As she took lessons in 
painting, she was called an artist, and only imagine, 
that quite suited her, though she had not the slight- 
est trace of talent. 

She would sleep every day till two or three 
o’clock; she had her coffee and lunch in bed. At 
dinner she would eat soup, lobster, fish, meat, as- 
paragus, game, and after she had gone to bed I used 
to bring up something, for instance roast beef, and 
she would eat it with a melancholy, careworn ex- 
pression, and if she waked in the night she would 
eat apples and oranges. 

The chief, so to say fundamental, characteristic 
of the woman was an amazing duplicity. She was 
continually deceitful every minute, apparently apart 
from any necessity, as it were by instinct, by an im- 
pulse such as makes the sparrow chirrup and the 
cockroach waggle its antenne. She was deceitful 
with me, with the footman, with the porter, with 
the tradesmen in the shops, with her acquaintances; 
not one conversation, not one meeting, took place 
without affectation and pretence. A man had only 
to come into our room— whoever it might be, a 
waiter, or a baron — for her eyes, her expression, 
her voice to change, even the contour of her figure 


64 The Darling and Other Stories 


was transformed. At the very first glance at her 
then, you would have said there were no more 
wealthy and fashionable people in Italy than we. 
She never met an artist or a musician without telling 
him all sorts of lies about his remarkable talent. 

“You have such a talent!” she would say, in 
honeyed cadences, “I’m really afraid of you. I 
think you must see right through people.” 

And all this simply in order to please, to be suc- 
cessful, to be fascinating! She waked up every 
morning with the one thought of ‘“‘ pleasing”! It 
was the aim and object of her life. If I had told 
her that in such a house, in such a street, there lived 
a man who was not attracted by her, it would have 
caused her real suffering. She wanted every day 
to enchant, to captivate, to drive men crazy. ‘The 
fact that I was in her power and reduced to a com- 
plete nonentity before her charms gave her the same 
sort of satisfaction that visitors used to feel in tour- 
naments. My subjection was not enough, and at 
nights, stretched out like a tigress, uncovered — she 
was always too hot — she would read the letters sent 
her by Lubkov; he besought her to return to Rus- 
sia, vowing if she did not he would rob or murder 
some one to get the money tocometo her. She hated 
him, but his passionate, slavish letters excited her. 
She had an extraordinary opinion of her own charms; 
she imagined that if somewhere, in some great as- 
sembly, men could have seen how beautifully she 
was made and the colour of her skin, she would have 


Ariadne 65 


vanquished all Italy, the whole world. WHer talk 
of her figure, of her skin, offended me, and observing 
this, she would, when she was angry, to vex me, say 
all sorts of vulgar things, taunting me. One day 
when we were at the summer villa of a lady of our 
acquaintance, and she lost her temper, she even went 
so far as to say: “If you don’t leave off boring 
me with your sermons, I'll undress this minute and 
lie naked here on these flowers.” 

Often looking at her asleep, or eating, or trying 
to assume a naive expression, I wondered why that 
extraordinary beauty, grace, and intelligence had 
been given her by God. Could it simply be for 
lolling in bed, eating and lying, lying endlessly? 
And was she intelligent really? She was afraid of 
three candles in a row, of the number thirteen, was’ 
terrified of spells and bad dreams. She argued 
about free love and freedom in general like a big- 
oted old woman, declared that Boleslav Markevitch 
was a better writer than Turgenev. But she was 
diabolically cunning and sharp, and knew how to 
seem a highly educated, advanced person in com- 
pany. 

Even at a good-humoured moment, she could al- 
ways insult a servant or kill an insect without a pang; 
she liked bull-fghts, liked to read about murders, 
and was angry when prisoners were acquitted. 

For the life Ariadne and I were leading, we had 
to have a great deal of money. My poor father 
sent me his pension, all the little sums he received, 


66 The Darling and Other Stories 


borrowed for me wherever he could, and when one 
day he answered me: ‘Non habeo,’ I sent him 
a desperate telegram in which I besought him to 
mortgage the estate. A little later I begged him to 
get money somehow on a second mortgage. He 
did this too without a murmur and sent me every 
farthing. Ariadne despised the practical side of 
life; all this was no concern of hers, and when fling- 
ing away thousands of francs to satisfy her mad 
desires I groaned like an old tree, she would be sing- 
ing “* Addio bella Napoli” with a light heart. 
Little by little I grew cold to her and began to be 
ashamed of our tie. I am not fond of pregnancy 
and confinements, but now I sometimes dreamed 
of a child who would have been at least a formal 
justification of our life. That I might not be com- 
pletely disgusted with myself, I began reading and 
visiting museums and galleries, gave up drinking and 
took to eating very little. If one keeps oneself well 
in hand from morning to night, one’s heart seems 
lighter. I began to bore Ariadne too. The peo- 
ple with whom she won her triumphs were, by the 
way, all of the middling sort; as before, there were 
no ambassadors, there was no salon, the money did 
not run to it, and this mortified her and made her 
sob, and she announced to me at last that perhaps 
she would not be against our returning to Russia. 
And here we are on our way. For the last few 
months she has been zealously corresponding with 
her brother; she evidently has some secret projects, 


Ariadne 67 


but what they are — God knows! I am sick of try- 
ing to fathom her underhand schemes! But we’re 
going, not to the country, but to Yalta and after- 
wards to the Caucasus. She can only exist now at 
watering-places, and if you knew how I hate all these 
watering-places, how suffocated and ashamed I am in 
them. If I could be inthe country now! If I could 
only be working now, earning my bread by the sweat 
of my brow, atoning for my follies. JI am conscious 
of a superabundance of energy and I believe that if 
I were to put that energy to work I could redeem 
my estate in five years. But now, as you see, there 
is a complication. Here we’re not abroad, but in 
mother Russia; we shall have to think of lawful wed- 
lock. Of course, all attraction is over; there is no 
trace left of my old love, but, however that may be, I 
am bound in honour to marry her. 


Shamohin, excited by his story, went below with 
me and we continued talking about women. It was 
late. It appeared that he and I were in the same 
cabin. 

‘So far it is only in the village that woman has 
not fallen behind man,” said Shamohin. ‘‘ There 
she thinks and feels just as man does, and struggles 
with nature in the name of culture as zealously as 
he. Inthe towns the woman of the bourgeois or in- 
tellectual class has long since fallen behind, and is 
returning to her primitive condition. She is half 
a human beast already, and, thanks to her, a great 


68 The Darling and Other Stories 


deal of what had been won by human genius has been 
lost again; the woman gradually disappears and in 
her place is the primitive female. This dropping- 
back on the part of the educated woman is a real 
danger to culture; in her retrogressive movement 
she tries to drag man after her and prevents him 
from moving forward. ‘That is incontestable.” 

I asked: ‘‘ Why generalise? Why judge of all 
women from Ariadne alone? The very struggle 
of women for education and sexual equality, which 
I look upon as a struggle for justice, precludes any 
hypothesis of a retrograde movement.” 

But Shamohin scarcely listened to me and he 
smiled distrustfully. He was a passionate, con- 
vinced misogynist, and it was impossible to alter his 
convictions. 

‘Oh, nonsense!” he interrupted. ‘‘ When once 
a woman sees in me, not a man, not an equal, but 
a male, and her one anxiety all her life is to attract 
me — that is, to take possession of me — how can 
one talk of their rights? Oh, don’t you believe 
them; they are very, very cunning! We men make 
a great stir about their emancipation, but they don’t 
care about their emancipation at all, they only pre- 
tend to care about it; they are horribly cunning 
things, horribly cunning! ” 

I began to feel sleepy and weary of discussion. 
I turned over with my face to the wall. 

Yes,” I heard as I fell asleep —‘ yes, and it’s 
our education that’s at fault, sir. In our towns, the 


Ariadne 69 


whole education and bringing up of women in its 
essence tends to develop her into the human beast — 
that is, to make her attractive to the male and 
able to vanquish him. Yes, indeed ”— Shamohin 
sighed —“‘ little girls ought to be taught and brought 
up with boys, so that they might be always together. 
A woman ought to be trained so that she may be 
able, like a man, to recognise when she’s wrong, 
or she always thinks she’s in the right. Instil into 
a little girl from her cradle that a man is not first 
of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neigh- 
bour, her equal in everything. Train her to think 
logically, to generalise, and do not assure her that 
her brain weighs less than a man’s and that there- 
fore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts, 
to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice 
to the shoemaker or the house painter has a brain 
of smaller size than the grown-up man too, yet he 
works, suffers, takes his part in the general struggle 
for existence. We must give up our attitude to the 
physiological aspect, too —to pregnancy and child- 
birth, seeing that in the first place women don’t have 
babies every month; secondly, not all women have 
babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works 
in the fields up to the day of her confinement and 
it does her no harm. Then there ought to be ab- 
solute equality in everyday life. If a man gives a 
lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she has 
dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have 
no objection if a girl of good family helps me to 


70 The Darling and Other Stories 


” 





put on my coat or hands me a glass of water 

I heard no more, for I fell asleep. 

Next morning when we were approaching Se- 
vastopol, it was damp, unpleasant weather; the ship 
rocked. Shamohin sat on deck with me, brooding 
and silent. When the bell rang for tea, men with 
their coat-collars turned up and ladies with pale, 
sleepy faces began going below; a young and very 
beautiful lady, the one who had been so angry with 
the Customs officers at Volotchisk, stopped before 
Shamohin and said with the expression of a naughty, 
fretful child: 

‘* Jean, your birdie’s been sea-sick.”’ 

Afterwards when I was at Yalta I saw the same 
beautiful lady dashing about on horseback with a 
couple of officers hardly able to keep up with her. 
And one morning I saw her in an overall and a 
Phrygian cap, sketching on the sea-front with a great 
crowd admiring her a little way off. I too was in- 
troduced to her. She pressed my hand with great 
warmth, and looking at me ecstatically, thanked me 
in honeyed cadences for the pleasure I had given 
her by my writings. 

“Don’t you believe her,” Shamohin whispered to 
me, ‘‘ she has never read a word of them.”’ 

When I was walking on the sea-front in the early 
evening Shamohin met me with his arms full of 
big parcels of fruits and dainties. 

“Prince Maktuev is here!” he said joyfully. 
“He came yesterday with her brother, the spirit- 


Ariadne 71 


ualist! Now I understand what she was writing to 
him about! Oh, Lord!” he went on, gazing up to 
heaven, and pressing his parcels to his bosom. ‘“‘ If 
she hits it off with the prince, it means freedom, then 
I can go back to the country with my father!” 

And he ran on. 

“‘T begin to believe in spirits,’ he called to me, 
looking back. ‘‘ The spirit of grandfather Ilarion 
seems to have prophesied the truth! Oh, if only it 
is so!” 


The day after this meeting I left Yalta and how 
Shamohin’s story ended I don’t know. 


ees 

noe i is 

ips 
ot 











POLINKA 


Ir is one o’clock in the afternoon. Shopping is at 
its height at the ‘‘ Nouveautés de Paris,” a drapery 
establishment in one of the Arcades. There is a 
monotonous hum of shopmen’s voices, the hum one 
hears at school when the teacher sets the boys to 
learn something by heart. This regular sound is 
not interrupted by the laughter of lady customers 
nor the slam of the glass door, nor the scurrying 
of the boys. 

Polinka, a thin fair little person whose mother 
is the head of a dressmaking establishment, is stand- 
ing in the middle of the shop looking about for some 
one. A dark-browed boy runs up to her and asks, 
looking at her very gravely: 

‘“ What is your pleasure, madam?” 

“Nikolay Timofeitch always takes my order,” 
answers Polinka. 

Nikolay Timofeitch, a graceful dark young man, 
fashionably dressed, with frizzled hair and a big 
pin in his cravat, has already cleared a place on the 
counter and is craning forward, looking at Polinka 
with a smile. 

‘““ Morning, Pelagea Sergeevna!”’ he cries in a 
pleasant, hearty baritone voice. ‘‘ What can I do 
for you?” 

75 


76 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘“ Good-morning!”’ says Polinka, going up to him. 
“You see, I’m back again. . . . Show me some 
gimp, please.”’ 

‘“ Gimp — for what purpose?” 

‘For a bodice trimming — to trim a whole dress, 
ny fect.’ 

Y Certainly” 

Nickolay Timofeitch lays several kinds of gimp 
before Polinka; she looks at the trimmings lan- 
guidly and begins bargaining over them. 

‘“Oh, come, a rouble’s not dear,” says the shop- 
man persuasively, with a condescending smile. 
“It’s a French trimming, pure silk. . . . We have a 
commoner sort, if you like, heavier. That’s forty- 
five kopecks a yard; of course, it’s nothing like the 
same quality.” 

‘““T want a bead corselet, too, with gimp buttons,” 
says Polinka, bending over the gimp and sighing for 
some reason. “And have you any bead motifs to 
match?” 

(79 ¥es-? 

Polinka bends still lower over the counter and 
asks softly: 

‘“ And why did you leave us so early on Thursday, 
Nikolay Timofeitch?” 

“Hm! It’s queer you noticed it,’ says the shop- 
man, with a smirk. ‘‘ You were so taken up with 
that fine student that... it’s queer you noticed 
yer 2 

Polinka flushes crimson and remains mute. With 


Polinka oe 


a nervous quiver in his fingers the shopman closes 
the boxes, and for no sort of object piles them one 
on the top of another. A moment of silence follows. 

‘““T want some bead lace, too,” says Polinka, lift- 
ing her eyes guiltily to the shopman. 

“What sort? Black or coloured? Bead lace on 
tulle is the most fashionable trimming.” 

‘’ And how much is it?” 

The black’s from eighty kopecks and the col- 
oured from two and a half roubles. I shall never 
come and see you again,’ Nikolay Timofeitch adds 
in an undertone. 

«6 Why? ” 

‘Why? It’s very simple. You must under- 
stand that yourself. Why should I distress myself? 
It’s a queer business! Do you suppose it’s a pleas- 
ure to me to see that student carrying on with you? 
I see it all and I understand. Even since autumn 
he’s been hanging about you and you go for a walk 
with him almost every day; and when he is with 
you, you gaze at him as though he were an angel. 
You are in love with him; there’s no one to beat him 
in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it’s no good talk- 
ing.” 

Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger on 
the counter in embarrassment. 

‘“T see it all,” the shopman goes on. “ What in- 
ducement have I to come and see you? I’ve got 
some pride. It’s not every one likes to play goose- 
berry. What was it you asked for?” 


78 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘“ Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but I’ve 
forgotten. I want some feather trimming too.” 

“What kind would you like?” 

“The best, something fashionable.” 

‘The most fashionable now are real bird feathers. 
If you want the most fashionable colour, it’s helio- 
trope or kanak — that is, claret with a yellow shade 
in it. We have an immense choice. And what all 
this affair is going to lead to, I really don’t under- 
stand. Here you are in love, and how is it to end?” 

Patches of red come into Nikolay Timofeitch’s 
face round his eyes. He crushes the soft feather 
trimming in his hand and goes on muttering: 

“Do you imagine he’ll marry you — is that it? 
You'd better drop any such fancies. Students are 
forbidden to marry. And do you suppose he comes 
to see you with honourable intentions? A likely 
idea! Why, these fine students don’t look on us 
as human beings... they only go to see shop- 
keepers and dressmakers to laugh at their ignorance 
and to drink. They’re ashamed to drink at home 
and in good houses, but with simple uneducated peo- 
ple like us they don’t care what any one thinks; they'd 
be ready to stand on their heads. Yes! Well, 
which feather trimming will you take? And if he 
hangs about and carries on with you, we know what 
he is after. . . . When he’s a doctor or a lawyer 
he’ll remember you: ‘Ah,’ he'll say, ‘I used to 
have a pretty fair little thing! I wonder where she 
is now?’ Even now I bet you he boasts among his 


Polinka 79 


friends that he’s got his eye on a little dressmaker.” 

Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the pile 
of white boxes. 

‘“No, I won’t take the feather trimming,” she 
sighs. ‘‘ Mamma had better choose it for herself; 
I may get the wrong one. I want six yards of fringe 
for an overcoat, at forty kopecks the yard. For 
the same coat I want cocoa-nut buttons, perforated, 
so they can be sown on firmly. . . .” 

Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and the 
buttons. She looks at him guiltily and evidently 
expects him to go on talking, but he remains sul- 
lenly silent while he tidies up the feather trimming. 

“TI mustn’t forget some buttons for a dressing- 
gown .. .” she says after an interval of silence, wip- 
ing her pale lips with a handkerchief. 

What kind?” 

“It’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, so give me some- 
thing rather striking.” 

“Yes, if it’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, you'd bet- 
ter have something bright. Here are some buttons. 
A combination of colours — red, blue, and the fash- 
ionable gold shade. Very glaring. The more re- 
fined prefer dull black with a bright border. But 
I don’t understand. Can’t you see for yourself? 
What can these . . . walks lead to?” 

‘**T don’t know,” whispers Polinka, and she bends 
over the buttons; ‘‘ I don’t know myself what’s come 
to me, Nikolay Timofeitch.”’ 

A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way 


80 The Darling and Other Stories 


behind Nikolay Timofeitch’s back, squeezing him 
to the counter, and beaming with the choicest gal- 
lantry, shouts: 

‘Be so kind, madam, as to step into this depart- 
ment. We have three kinds of jerseys: plain, 
braided, and trimmed with beads! Which may | 
have the pleasure of showing you?” 

At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka, 
pronouncing in a rich, deep voice, almost a bass: 

‘They must be seamless, with the trade mark 
stamped in them, please.” 

‘Pretend to be looking at the things,” Nikolay 
Timofeitch whispers, bending down to Polinka with 
a forced smile. ‘‘ Dear me, you do look pale and 
ill; you are quite changed. He'll throw you over, 
Pelagea Sergeevna! Or if he does marry you, it 
won’t be for love but from hunger; he’ll be tempted 
by your money. He’ll furnish himself a nice home 
with your dowry, and then be ashamed of you. 
He'll keep you out of sight of his friends and visi- | 
tors, because you’re uneducated. He'll call you ‘ my 
dummy of a wife.’ You wouldn’t know how to be- 
have in a doctor’s or lawyer’s circle. To them you're 
a dressmaker, an ignorant creature.” 

‘Nikolay Timofeitch!’? somebody shouts from 
the other end of the shop. ‘‘ The young lady here 
wants three yards of ribbon with a metal stripe. 
Have we any?” 

Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction, smirks 
and shouts: 


Polinka 81 


‘Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe, ot- 
toman with a satin stripe, and satin with a moiré 
stripe!” 

‘Oh, by the way, I mustn’t forget, Olga asked me 
to get her a pair of stays!’ says Polinka. 

“There are tears in your eyes,” says Nikolay 
Timofeitch in dismay. ‘‘ What’s that for? Come 
to the corset department, I’ll screen you — it looks 
awkward.” 

With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free 
and easy manner, the shopman rapidly conducts 
Polinka to the corset department and conceals her 
from the public eye behind a high pyramid of 
boxes. 

“What sort of corset may I show you?” he asks 
aloud, whispering immediately: ‘‘ Wipe your 
eyes!” 

“Twant... Iwant.. . size forty-eight cen- 
timetres. Only she wanted one, lined .. . with 
real whalebone . . . I must talk to you, Nikolay 
Timofeitch. Come to-day!” 

“Talk? What about? There’s nothing to talk 
about.” 

“You are the only person who . . . cares about 
me, and I’ve no one to talk to but you.” 

“‘ These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone. 

What is there for us to talk about? It’s 
no use talking. ... You are going for a walk 
with him to-day, I suppose?” 

eee am,” 


82 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Then what’s the use of talking? Talk won't 
hel. 2. Mow are-in Tove, aren t your ~ 

“Yes ...’’ Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and 
big tears gush from her eyes. 

‘What is there to say?” mutters Nikolay Tim- 
ofeitch, shrugging his shoulders nervously and turn- 
ine. pale, "There's no nééd oF talk, a ve 
your eyes, that’s all. .1....... ask dor noting. 

At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up 
to the pyramid of boxes, and says to his customer: 

‘“ Let me show you some good elastic garters that 
do not impede the circulation, certified by medical 
authority 22.” 

Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying 
to conceal her emotion and his own, wrinkles his 
face into a smile and says aloud: 

‘There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton 
and silk! Oriental, English, Valenciennes, crochet, 
torchon, are cotton. And rococo, soutache, Cam- 
bray, are silk. ... For God’s sake, wipe your 
eyes! They’re coming this way!” 

And seeing that her tears are still gushing he goes 
on louder than ever: 

* Spanish; Rococo, soutache, Cambray. j. 
stockings, thread, cotton, silk . . .” 


AINY OLA 








ANYUTA 


InN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished 
apartments Stepan Klotchkov, a medical student in 
his third year, was walking to and fro, zealously 
conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his 
forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to 
learn it by heart. 

In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat 
on a stool the girl who shared his room — Anyuta, 
a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty, very pale 
with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent back she 
was busy embroidering with red thread the collar 
of a man’s shirt. She was working against time. 
. . . The clock in the passage struck two drowsily, 
yet the little room had not been put to rights for 
the morning. Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown 
about, books, clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled with 
soap-suds in which cigarette ends were swimming, 
and the litter on the floor —all seemed as though 
purposely jumbled together in one confusion. . . 

‘The right lung consists of three parts. . 
Klotchkovy repeated. ‘‘ Boundaries! Upper part 
on anterior wall of thorax reaches the fourth or fifth 
rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib... be- 
hind to the spina scapule .. .” 


Klotchkoy raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving 
85 


bd 


86 The Darling and Other Stories 


to visualise what he had just read. Unable to form 
a clear picture of it, he began feeling his upper ribs 
through his waistcoat. 

‘“These ribs are like the keys of a piano,” he 
said. ‘‘One must familiarise oneself with them 
somehow, if one is not to get muddled over them. 
One must study them in the skeleton and the living 
body. . . . I say, Anyuta, let me pick them out.” 

Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse, 
and straightened herself up. Klotchkov sat down 
facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs. 

“Pmt . «i -One can’t feel the, ast tien 
behind the shoulder-blade. . . . This must be the 
second, rib. ... Yes. . this is- the toi a 
this-1s the: fourth. < . .. H'ml s .-3 yes, 3 
are you wriggling?” 

“Your fingers are cold!” 

‘“Come, come... it won’t kill you. Don’t 
twist about. That must be the third rib, then... 
this is the fourth... . You look such a skinny 
thing, and yet one can hardly feel your ribs. That's 
the second... that’s the third... . Oh, this 
is muddling, and one can’t see it clearly. . . . I must 
draw it. . . . Where’s my crayon?” 

Klotchkov took his crayon and drew on Anyuta’s 
chest several parallel lines corresponding with the 
ribs. 

‘“Firsterate. That’s all straightforward... . 
Well, now I can sound you. Stand up!” 

‘\nyuta stood up and raised her chin. Klotchkov 


Anyuta 87 


began sounding her, and was so absorbed in this 
occupation that he did not notice how Anyuta’s lips, 
nose, and fingers turned blue with cold. Anyuta 
shivered, and was afraid the student, noticing it, 
would leave off drawing and sounding her, and then, 
perhaps, might fail in his exam. 

‘“ Now it’s all clear,’ said Klotchkov when he had 
finished. ‘‘ You sit like that and don’t rub off the 
crayon, and meanwhile I'll learn up a little more.” 

And the student again began walking to and fro, 
repeating to himself. Anyuta, with black stripes 
across her chest, looking as though she had been tat- 
tooed, sat thinking, huddled up and shivering with 
cold. She said very little as a rule; she was always 
silent, thinking and thinking. . 

In the six or seven years of her wanderings from 
one furnished room to another, she had known five 
students like Klotchkov. Now they had all finished 
their studies, had gone out into the world, and, of 
course, like respectable people, had long ago for- 
gotten her. One of them was living in Paris, two 
were doctors, the fourth was an artist, and the fifth 
was said to be already a professor. Klotchkov was 
the sixth. ... Soon he, too, would finish his 
studies and go out into the world. There was a fine 
future before him, no doubt, and Klotchkov prob- 
ably would become a great man, but the present was 
anything but bright; Klotchkov had no tobacco and 
no tea, and there were only four lumps of sugar left. 
She must make haste and finish her embroidery, take 


88 The Darling and Other Stories 


it to the woman who had ordered it, and with the 
quarter rouble she would get for it, buy tea and to- 
bacco. 

‘“Can I come in?” asked a voice at the door. 

Anyuta quickly threw a woollen shawl over her 
shoulders. Fetisov, the artist, walked in. 

‘“T have come to ask you a favour,” he began, 
addressing Klotchkov, and glaring like a wild beast 
from under the long locks that hung over his brow. 
“Do me a favour; lend me your young lady just for 
a couple of hours! I’m painting a picture, you see, 
and I can’t get on without a model.” 

“Oh, with pleasure,’’ Klotchkov agreed. “ Go 
along, Anyuta.” 

‘The things I’ve had to put up with there,” 
Anyuta murmured softly. 

‘Rubbish! The man’s asking you for the sake 
of art, and not for any sort of nonsense. Why not 
help him if you can?” 

Anyuta began dressing. 

‘“ And what are you painting?” asked Klotchkov. 

“Psyche; it’s a fine subject. But it won't go, 
somehow. I have to keep painting from different 
models. Yesterday I was painting one with blue 
legs. ‘Why are your legs blue?’ I asked her. 
‘It’s my stockings stain them,’ she said. And you're 
still grinding! Lucky fellow! You have patience.” 

‘‘ Medicine’s a job one can’t get on with without 
grinding.” 

“H’m! ... Excuse me, Klotchkov, but you 


Anyuta 89 


do live like a pig! It’s awful the way you live!” 

Patow- no. vyou.méean? f can't help it, ..... 1 
only get twelve roubles a month from my father, and 
it’s hard to live decently on that.” 

meee... yes. 5. ‘said ‘the artist, frowning 
with an air of disgust; ‘‘ but, still, you might live bet- 
ter... . An educated man is in duty bound to 
have taste, isn’t he? And goodness knows what it’s 
like here! ‘The bed not made, the slops, the dirt 
meevesterdays,. porridge in the plates... 
A700!” 

‘““'That’s true,” said the student in confusion; 
“but Anyuta has had no time to-day to tidy up; 
she’s been busy all the while.” 

When Anyuta and the artist had gone out Klotch- 
koy lay down on the sofa and began learning, lying 
down; then he accidentally dropped asleep, and wak- 
ing up an hour later, propped his head on his fists 
and sank into gloomy reflection. He recalled the 
artist’s words that an educated man was in duty bound 
to have taste, and his surroundings actually struck 
him now as loathsome and revolting. He saw, as 
it were in his mind’s eye, his own future, when he 
would see his patients in his consulting-room, drink 
tea in a large dining-room in the company of his wife, 
a real lady. And now that slop-pail in which the 
cigarette ends were swimming looked incredibly dis- 
gusting. Anyuta, too, rose before his imagination 
—a plain, slovenly, pitiful figure . . . and he made 
up his mind to part with her at once, at all costs. 


90 The Darling and Other Stories 


When, on coming back from the artist’s, she took 
off her coat, he got up and said to her seriously: 

“Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and 
listen. We must part! The fact is, I don’t want 
to live with you any longer.” . 

Anyuta had come back from the artist’s worn out 
and exhausted. Standing so long as a model had 
made her face look thin and sunken, and her chin 
sharper than ever. She said nothing in answer to 
the student’s words, only her lips began to tremble. 

‘“You know we should have to part sooner or 
later, anyway,’ said the student. “ Youre a mice; 
good girl, and not a fool; you'll understand. . . .” 

Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped 
up her embroidery in paper, gathered together her 
needles and thread: she found the screw of paper 
with the four lumps of sugar in the window, and 
laid it on the table by the books. 

“That's... . your Sugar... .” she said-soriy: 
and turned away to conceal her tears. 

‘Why are you crying?” asked Klotchkov. 

He walked about the room in confusion, and said: 

“You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why, you 
know we shall have to part. We can’t stay together 
for ever.” 

She had gathered together all her belongings, 
and turned to say good-bye to him, and he felt sorry 
for her. 

“ Shall I let her stay on here another week?” he 
thought. ‘She really may as well stay, and I'll 


Anyuta gI 


tell her to go in a week; and vexed at his own weak- 
ness, he shouted to her roughly: 

‘“Come, why are you standing there? If you 
are going, go; and if you don’t want to, take off your 
coat and stay! You can stay!” 

Anyuta took off her coat, silently, stealthily, then 
blew her nose also stealthily, sighed, and noiselessly 
returned to her invariable position on her stool by 
the window. 

The student drew his textbook to him and began 
again pacing from corner to corner. ‘ The right 
lung consists of three parts,” he repeated; “ the 
upper part, on anterior wall of thorax, reaches the 
fouren-or fitth rib...” 

In the passage some one shouted at the top of his 
voice: ‘Grigory! The samovar!” 











THE TWO VOLODYAS 


“Ler me; I want to drive myself! I'll sit by the 
driver!’ Sofya Lvovna said ina loud voice. ‘‘ Wait 
a minute, driver; I’ll get up on the box beside you.” 

She stood up in the sledge, and her husband, 
Vladimir Nikititch, and the friend of her childhood, 
Vladimir Mihalovitch, held her arms to prevent her 
falling. The three horses were galloping fast. 

‘“‘T said you ought not to have given her brandy,” 
Vladimir Nikititch whispered to his companion with 
vexation. ‘‘ What a fellow you are, really!” 

The Colonel knew by experience that in women 
like his wife, Sofya Lvovna, after a little too much 
wine, turbulent gaiety was followed by hysterical 
laughter and then tears. He was afraid that when 
they got home, instead of being able to sleep, he 
would have to be administering compresses and 
drops. 

“Wo!” cried Sofya Lvovna. ‘I want to drive 
myself! ” 

She felt genuinely gay and triumphant. For the 
last two months, ever since her wedding, she had 
been tortured by the thought that she had married 
Colonel Yagitch from worldly motives and, as it is 
said, par dépit; but that evening, at the restaurant, 
she had suddenly become convinced that she loved 

95 


96 The Darling and Other Stories 


him passionately. In spite of his fifty-four years, 
he was so slim, agile, supple, he made puns 
and hummed to the gipsies’ tunes so charmingly. 
Really, the older men were nowadays a thousand 
times more interesting than the young. It seemed 
as though age and youth had changed parts. The 
Colonel was two years older than her father, but 
could there be any importance in that if, honestly 
speaking, there were infinitely more vitality, go, and 
freshness in him than in herself, though she was only 
twenty-three ? ng 

‘“Oh, my darling!” she thought. ‘‘ You are 
wonderful! ” 

She had become convinced in the restaurant, too, 
that not a spark of her old feeling remained. For 
the friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mihalovitch, 
or simply Volodya, with whom only the day before 
she had been madly, miserably in love, she now felt 
nothing but complete indifference. All that even- 
ing he had seemed to her spiritless, torpid, uninter- 
esting, and insignificant, and the sangfroid with which 
he habitually avoided paying at restaurants on this 
occasion revolted her, and she had hardly been able 
to resist saying, “If you are poor, you should stay 
at home.’’? The Colonel paid for all. 

Perhaps because trees, telegraph posts, and drifts 
of snow kept flitting past her eyes, all sorts of dis- 
connected ideas came rushing into her mind. She 
reflected: the bill at the restaurant had been a hun- 
dred and twenty roubles, and a hundred had gone 


The Two Volodyas 97 


to the gipsies, and to-morrow she could fling away 
a thousand roubles if she liked; and only two months 
ago, before her wedding, she had not had three rou- 
bles of her own, and had to ask her father for every 
trifle. What a change in her life! 

Her thoughts were ina tangle. She recalled, how, 
when she was a child of ten, Colonel Yagitch, now 
her husband, used to make love to her aunt, and 
every one in the house said that he had ruined her. 
And her aunt had, in fact, often come down to din- 
ner with her eyes red from crying, and was always 
going off somewhere; and people used to say of her 
that the poor thing could find no peace anywhere. 
He had been very handsome in those days, and had 
an extraordinary reputation as a lady-killer. So 
much so that he was known all over the town, and 
it was said of him that he paid a round of visits to 
his adorers every day like a doctor visiting his pa- 
tients. And even now, in spite of his grey hair, his 
wrinkles, and his spectacles, his thin face looked 
handsome, especially in profile. 

Sofya Lvovna’s father was an army doctor, and 
had at one time served in the same regiment with 
Colonel Yagitch. Volodya’s father was an army 
doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same 
regiment as her father and Colonel Yagitch. In 
spite of many amatory adventures, often very com- 
plicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly 
at the university, and had taken a very good degree. 
Now he was specialising in foreign literature, and 


98 The Darling and Other Stories 


was said to be writing a thesis. He lived with his 
father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had 
no means of his own, though he was thirty. As 
children Sofya and he had lived under the same roof, 
though in different flats. He often came to play 
with her, and they had dancing and French les- 
sons together. But when he grew up into a grace- 
ful, remarkably handsome young man, she began to 
feel shy of him, and then fell madly in love with him, 
and had loved him right up to the time when she 
was married to Yagitch. He, too, had been re- 
nowned for his success with women almost from the 
age of fourteen, and the ladies who deceived their 
husbands on his account excused themselves by say- 
ing that he was only a boy. Some one had told a 
story of him lately that when he was a student liv- 
ing in lodgings so as to be near the university, it 
always happened if one knocked at his door, that 
one heard his footstep, and then a whispered apol- 
ogy: “Pardon, je ne suis pas seul.’ Yagitch was 
delighted with him, and blessed him as a worthy suc- 
cessor, as Derchavin blessed Pushkin; he appeared 
to be fond of him. They would play billiards or 
picquet by the hour together without uttering a word, 
if Yagitch drove out on any expedition he always 
took Volodya with him, and Yagitch was the only 
person Volodya initiated into the mysteries of his 
thesis. In earlier days, when Yagitch was rather 
younger, they had often been in the position of rivals, 
but they had never been jealous of one another. In 


The Two Volodyas 99 


the circle in which they moved Yagitch was nick- 
named Big Volodya, and his friend Little Volodya. 

Besides Big Volodya, Little Volodya, and Sofya 
Lyoyna, there was a fourth person in the sledge — 
Margarita Alexandrovna, or, as every one called her, 
Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagitch—a very pale 
girl over thirty, with black eyebrows and a pince- 
nez, who was for ever smoking cigarettes, even in 
the bitterest frost, and who always had her knees 
and the front of her blouse covered with cigarette 
ash. She spoke through her nose, drawling every 
word, was of a cold temperament, could drink any 
amount of wine and liquor without being drunk, and 
used to tell scandalous anecdotes in a languid and 
tasteless way. At home she spent her days reading 
thick magazines, covering them with cigarette ash, 
or eating frozen apples. 

“Sonia, give over fooling,” she said, drawling. 
“It’s really silly.” 

As they drew near the city gates they went more 
slowly, and began to pass people and houses. Sofya 
Lyovna subsided, nestled up to her husband, and 
gave herself up to her thoughts. Litle Volodya sat 
opposite. By now her light-hearted and cheerful 
thoughts were mingled with gloomy ones. She 
thought that the man sitting opposite knew that she 
loved him, and no doubt he believed the gossip that 
she married the Colonel par dépit. She had never 
told him of her love; she had not wanted him to 
know, and had done her best to hide her feeling, but 


100 The Darling and Other Stories 


from her face she knew that he understood her per- 
fectly — and her pride suffered. But what was most 
humiliating in her position was that, since her wed- 
ding, Volodya had suddenly begun to pay her at- 
tention, which he had never done before, spending 
hours with her, sitting silent or chattering about 
trifles; and even now in the sledge, though he did not 
talk to her, he touched her foot with his and pressed 
her hand a little. Evidently that was all he wanted, 
that she should be married; and it was evident that 
he despised her and that she only excited in him an 
interest of a special kind as though she were an im- 
moral and disreputable woman. And when the 
feeling of triumph and love for her husband were 
mingled in her soul with humiliation and wounded 
pride, she was overcome by a spirit of defiance, and 
longed to sit on the box, to shout and whistle to the 
horses. 

Just as they passed the nunnery the huge hundred- 
ton bell rang out. Rita crossed herself. 

“Our Olga is in that nunnery,” said Sofya 
Lvovna, and she, too, crossed herself and 
shuddered. 

‘“Why did she go into the nunnery?” said the 
Colonel. 

“ Par dépit,’ Rita answered crossly, with obvious 
allusion to Sofya’s marrying Yagitch. “ Par deépit 
is all the fashion nowadays. Defiance of all the 
world. She was always laughing, a desperate flirt, 
fond of nothing but balls and young men, and all of 


The Two Volodyas 101 


a sudden off she went—to surprise every one!” 

‘“That’s not true,” said Volodya, turning down 
the collar of his fur coat and showing his handsome 
face. ‘It wasn’t a case of par dépit; it was simply 
horrible, if you like. Her brother Dmitri was sent 
to penal servitude, and they don’t know where he 1s 
now. And her mother died of grief.” 

He turned up his collar again. 

“Olga did well,’ he added in a muffled voice. 
“Living as an adopted child, and with such a para- 
gon as Sofya Lvovna,— one must take that into con- 
sideration too!” 

Sofya Lvovna heard a tone of contempt in his 
voice, and longed to say something rude to him, but 
she said nothing. The spirit of defiance came over 
her again; she stood up again and shouted in a tear- 
ful voice: 

“IT want to go to the early service! Driver, 
back! I want to see Olga.” 

They turned back. The nunnery bell had a deep 
note, and Sofya Lvovna fancied there was something 
in it that reminded her of Olga and her life. ‘The 
other church bells began ringing too. When the 
driver stopped the horses, Sofya Lvovna jumped out 
of the sledge and, unescorted and alone, went quickly 
up to the gate. 

“Make haste, please!’ her husband called to 
her, ~ it’s late already.” 

She went in at the dark gateway, then by the 
avenue that led from the gate to the chief church. 


102. The Darling and Other Stories 


The snow crunched under her feet, and the ringing 
was just above her head, and seemed to vibrate 
through her whole being. Here was the church 
door, then three steps down, and an ante-room with 
ikons of the saints on both sides, a fragrance of 
juniper and incense, another door, and a dark figure 
opening it and bowing very low. ‘The service had 
not yet begun. One nun was walking by the ikon- 
screen and lighting the candles on the tall standard 
candlesticks, another was lighting the chandelier. 
Here and there, by the columns and the side chapels, 
there stood black, motionless figures. ‘‘ I suppose 
they must remain standing as they are now till the 
morning,” thought Sofya Lvovna, and it seemed to 
her dark, cold, and dreary — drearier than a grave- 
yard. She looked with a feeling of dreariness at 
the still, motionless figures and suddenly felt a pang 
at her heart. For some reason, in one short nun, 
with thin shoulders and a black kerchief on her head, 
she recognised Olga, though when Olga went into 
the nunnery she had been plump and had looked 
taller. Hlesitating and extremely agitated, Sofya 
Lvovna went up to the nun, and looking over her 
shoulder into her face, recognised her as Olga. 

“Olga!” she cried, throwing up her hands, and 
could not speak from emotion. “ Olga!” 

The nun knew her at once; she raised her eye- 
brows in surprise, and her pale, freshly washed face, 
and even, it seemed, the white headcloth that she 


The Two Volodyas 103 


wore under her wimple, beamed with pleasure. 

“What a miracle from God!”’ she said, and she, 
too, threw up her thin, pale little hands. 

Sofya Lvovna hugged her and kissed her warmly, 
and was afraid as she did so that she might smell of 
spirits. 

‘“We were just driving past, and we thought 
of you,” she said, breathing hard, as though she had 
been running. ‘‘ Dear me! MHow pale you are! 
ie lm very glad to’ see you. Well, tell me 
how are you? Are you dull?” 

Sofya Lvovna looked round at the other nuns, 
and went on in a subdued voice: 

‘“There’ve been so many changes at home... 
you know, I’m married to Colonel Yagitch. You 
remember him, no doubt. ... JI am very happy 
with him.” 

“Well, thank God for that. And is your father 
quite well?” 

“Yes, he is quite well. He often speaks of you. 
You must come and see us during the holidays, Olga, 
won't you?” 

“TI will come,” said Olga, and she smiled. “ I’ll 
come on the second day.” 

Sofya Lvovna began crying, she did not know 
why, and for a minute she shed tears in silence, then 
she wiped her eyes and said: 

‘Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. 
She is with us too. And Volodya’s here. They 


104 The Darling and Other Stories 


are close to the gate. How pleased they'd be if 
you’d come out and see them. Let’s go out to 
them; the service hasn’t begun yet.” 

“Let us,’ Olga agreed. She crossed herself 
three times and went out with Sofya Lvovna to the 
entrance. 

‘So you say you’re happy, Sonitchka?”’ she asked 
when they came out at the gate. 

(a9 Very.” 

“Well, thank God for that.” 

The two Volodyas, seeing the nun, got out of the 
sledge and greeted her respectfully. Both were vis- 
ibly touched by her pale face and her black monastic 
dress, and both were pleased that she had remem- 
bered them and come to greet them. That she 
might not be cold, Sofya Lvovna wrapped her up 
in a rug and put one half of her fur coat round her. 
Her tears had relieved and purified her heart, and 
she was glad that this noisy, restless, and, in reality, 
impure night should unexpectedly end so purely and 
serenely. And to keep Olga by her a little longer 
she suggested: 

“Let us take her for:a drive!, “Geto ie. 
we'll go a little way.” 

The men expected the nun to refuse — saints don't 
dash about in three-horse sledges; but to their sur- 
prise, she consented and got into the sledge. And 
while the horses were galloping to the city gate all 
were silent, and only tried to make her warm and 
comfortable, and each of them was thinking of what 





The Two Volodyas 105 


she had been in the past and what she was now. 
Her face was now passionless, inexpressive, cold, 
pale, and transparent, as though there were water, 
not blood, in her veins. And two or three years ago 
she had been plump and rosy, talking about her 
suitors and laughing at every trifle. 

Near the city gate the sledge turned back; when 
it stopped ten minutes later near the nunnery, Olga 
got out of the sledge. The bell had begun to ring 
more rapidly. 

‘The Lord save you,” said Olga, and she bowed 
low as nuns do. 

*“ Mind you come, Olga.” 

rowel, Twill.” 

She went and quickly disappeared through the 
gateway. And when after that they drove on again, 
Sofya Lvovna felt very sad. Every one was silent. 
She felt dispirited and weak all over. ‘That she 
should have made a nun get into a sledge and drive 
in a company hardly sober seemed to her now stupid, 
tactless, and almost sacrilegious. As the intoxica- 
tion passed off, the desire to deceive herself passed 
away also. It was clear to her now that she did 
not love her husband, and never could love him, 
and that it all had been foolishness and nonsense. 
She had married him from interested motives, be- 
cause, in the words of her school friends, he was 
madly rich, and because she was afraid of becoming 
an old maid like Rita, and because she was sick of 
her father, the doctor, and wanted to annoy Volodya. 


106 The Darling and Other Stories 


If she could have imagined when she got married, 
that it would be so oppressive, so dreadful, and so 
hideous, she would not have consented to the mar- 
riage for all the wealth in the world. But now there 
was no setting it right. She must make up her mind 
to it. 

They reached home. Getting into her warm, 
soft bed, and pulling the bed-clothes over her, Sofya 
Lvovna recalled the dark church, the smell of in- 
cense, and the figures by the columns, and she felt 
frightened at the thought that these figures would 
be standing there all the while she was asleep. ‘The 
early service would be very, very long; then there 
would be ‘‘ the hours,” then the mass, then the serv- 
efor the day... 5 

‘But of course there is a God —there certainly 
is a God; and [ shall have to die, so that sooner or 
later one must think of one’s soul, of eternal life, 
like Olga. Olga is saved now; she has settled all 
questions for herself. . . . But if there is no God? 
Then her life is wasted. But how is it wasted? 
Why is it wasted?” 

And a minute later the thought came into her 
mind again: 

‘There is a God; death must come; one must 
think of one’s soul. If Olga were to see death 
before her this minute she would not be afraid. 
She is prepared. And the great thing is that she 
has already solved the problem of life for herself. 
There. 1s a God . . . yess. 4, But/4as Greresne 


The Two Volodyas 107 


other solution except going into a monastery? To 
go into the monastery means to renounce life, to 
Soot. es 

Sofya Lvovna began to feel rather frightened; 
she hid her head under her pillow. 

“I mustn’t think about it,” she whispered. ‘I 
musi. 5.” 

Yagitch was walking about on the carpet in the 
next room with a soft jingle of spurs, thinking about 
something. The thought occurred to Sofya Lvovna 
that this man was near and dear to her only for one 
reason — that his name, too, was Vladimir. She 
sat up in bed and called tenderly: 

‘Volodya!” 

“What is it?’’ her husband responded. 

“ Nothing.” 

She lay down again. She heard a bell, perhaps 
the same nunnery bell. Again she thought of the 
vestibule and the dark figures, and thoughts of God 
and of inevitable death strayed through her mind, 
and she covered her ears that she might not hear 
the bell. She thought that before old age and death 
there would be a long, long life before her, and that 
day by day she would have to put up with being close 
to a man she did not love, who had just now come 
into the bedroom and was getting into bed, and 
would have to stifle in her heart her hopeless love 
for the other young, fascinating, and, as she thought, 
exceptional man. She looked at her husband and 
tried to say good-night to him, but suddenly burst 


108 The Darling and Other Stories 


out crying instead. She was vexed with herself. 

‘“ Well, now then for the music!” said Yagitch. 

She was not pacified till ten o’clock in the morn- 
ing. She left off crying and trembling all over, but 
she began to have a splitting headache. Yagitch 
was in haste to go to the late mass, and in the next 
room was grumbling at his orderly, who was help- 
ing him to dress. He came into the bedroom once 
with the soft jingle of his spurs to fetch something, 
and then a second time wearing his epaulettes, and 
his orders on his breast, limping slightly from rheu- 
matism; and it struck Sofya Lvovna that he looked 
and walked like a bird of prey. 

She heard Yagitch ring the telephone bell. 

‘Be so good as to put me on to the Vassilevsky 
barracks,” he said; and a minute later: ‘“* Vassilev- 
sky barracks? Please ask Doctor Salimovitch to 
come to the telephone...” And a minute later: 
“With whom am I speaking? Is it you, Volodya? 
Delighted. Ask your father to come to us at once, 
dear boy; my wife is rather shattered after yester- 
day. Not at home, you say? H’m!... Thank 
you. Very good. I shall be much obliged... . 
Merci.” 

Yagitch came into the bedroom for the third time, 
bent down to his wife, made the sign of the cross 
over her, gave her his hand to kiss (the women who 
had been in love with him used to kiss his hand and 
he had got into the habit of it), and saying that he 
should be back to dinner, went out. 


The Two Volodya 109 


At twelve o’clock the maid came in to announce 
that Vladimir Mihalovitch had arrived. Sofya 
Lvovna, staggering with fatigue and headache, hur- 
riedly put on her marvellous new lilac dressing-gown 
trimmed with fur, and hastily did up her hair after 
a fashion. She was conscious of an inexpressible 
tenderness in her heart, and was trembling with joy 
and with fear that he might go away. She wanted 
nothing but to look at him. 

Volodya came dressed correctly for calling, in a 
swallow-tail coat and white tie. When Sofya 
Lvovna came in he kissed her hand and expressed 
his genuine regret that she was ill. Then when 
they had sat down, he admired her dressing-gown. 

“I was upset by seeing Olga yesterday,” she 
said. “At first I felt it dreadful, but now I envy 
her. She is like a rock that cannot be shattered; 
there is no moving her. But was there no other 
solution for her, Volodya? Is burying oneself alive 
the only solution of the problem of life? Why, it’s 
death, not life! ”’ 

At the thought of Olga, Volodya’s face softened. 

“Here, you are a clever man, Volodya,” said 
Sofya Lvovna. ‘Show me how to do what Olga 
has done. Of course, I am not a believer and 
should not go into a nunnery, but one can do some- 
thing equivalent. Life isn’t easy for me,” she added 
ater-a-briel pause. ~* ‘Tell me: what to-do, 3. 
Tell me something I can believe in. ‘Tell me some- 
thing, if it’s only one word,” 


110 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘“One word? By all means: tararaboomdeeay.”’ 

‘““Volodya, why do you despise me?”’ she asked 
hotly. ‘‘ You talk to me in a special, fatuous way, 
if you’ll excuse me, not as one talks to one’s friends 
and women one respects. You are so good at your 
work, you are fond of science; why do you never 
talk of it to me? Why is it? Am I not good 
enough?” 

Volodya frowned with annoyance and said: 

““Why do you want science all of a sudden? 
Don’t you perhaps want constitutional government ? 
Or sturgeon and horse-radish? ” 

‘Very well, I am a worthless, trivial, silly woman 
with no convictions. I have a mass, a mass of de- 
fects. I am neurotic, corrupt, and I ought to be 
despised for it. But you, Volodya, are ten years 
older than I am, and my husband is thirty years 
older. I’ve grown up before your eyes, and if you 
would, you could have made anything you liked of 
me —an angel. But you’’— her voice quivered — 
‘treat me horribly. Yagitch has married me in his 
old age, and you . . .” 

‘“Come, come,” said Volodya, sitting nearer her 
and kissing both her hands. ‘‘ Let the Schopen- 
hauers philosophise and prove whatever they like, 
while we'll kiss these little hands.” 

“You despise me, and if only you knew how mis- 
erable it makes me,” she said uncertainly, knowing 
beforehand that he would not believe her. “ And 
if you only knew how I want to change, to begin an- 


The Two Volodyas 18 | 


other life! I think of it with enthusiasm!” and 
tears of enthusiasm actually came into her eyes. 
‘To be good, honest, pure, not to be lying; to have 
an object in life.” 

‘“Come, come, come, please don’t be affected! 
I don’t like it!’ said Volodya, and an ill-humoured 
expression came into his face. ‘“‘ Upon my word, 
you might be on the stage. Let us behave like sim- 
ple people.” 

To prevent him from getting cross and going 
away, she began defending herself, and forced her- 
self to smile to please him; and again she began talk- 
ing of Olga, and of how she longed to solve the prob- 
lem of her life and to become something real. 

‘’'Ta-ra-ra-boomdee-ay,” he hummed. ‘ Tara- 
ra-boom-dee-ay ! ” 

And all at once he put his arm round her waist, 
while she, without knowing what she was doing, 
laid her hands on his shoulders and for a minute 
gazed with ecstasy, almost intoxication, at his clever, 
ironical face, his brow, his eyes, his handsome beard. 

“You have known that I love you for ever so 
long,” she confessed to him, and she blushed pain- 
fully, and felt that her lips were twitching with 
shame. ‘I love you. Why do you torture me?” 

She shut her eyes and kissed him passionately 
on the lips, and for a long while, a full minute, 
could not take her lips away, though she knew it 
was unseemly, that he might be thinking the worse 
of her, that a servant might come in. 


112 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Oh, how you torture me!” she repeated. 

When half an hour later, having got all that he 
wanted, he was sitting at lunch in the dining-room, 
she was kneeling before him, gazing greedily into 
his face, and he told her that she was like a little 
dog waiting for a bit of ham to be thrown to it. 
Then he sat her on his knee, and dancing her up 
and down like a child, hummed: 


‘Tara-raboom-dee-ay. . . . Tara-raboomdee- 
” 


ay. 
And when he was getting ready to go she asked 
him in a passionate whisper: 

“When? To-day? Where?” And held out 
both hands to his mouth as though she wanted to 
seize his answer in them. 

To-day it will hardly be convenient,” he said 
after a minute’s thought. ‘“ To-morrow, perhaps.” 

And they parted. Before dinner Sofya Lvovna 
went to the nunnery to see Olga, but there she was 
told that Olga was reading the psalter somewhere 
over the dead. From the nunnery she went to her 
father’s and found that he, too, was out. Then 
she took another sledge and drove aimlessly about 
the streets till evening. And for some reason she 
kept thinking of the aunt whose eyes were red with 
crying, and who could find no peace anywhere. 

And at night they drove out again with three 
horses to a restaurant out of town and listened to 
the gipsies. And driving back past the nunnery 
again, Sofya Lvovna thought of Olga, and she felt 


The Two Volodyas 113 


aghast at the thought that for the girls and women 
of her class there was no solution but to go on driv- 
ing about and telling lies, or going into a nunnery to 
mortify the flesh. . . . And next day she met her 
lover, and again Sofya Lvovna drove about the town 
alone in a hired sledge thinking about her aunt. 

A week later Volodya threw her over. And after 
that life went on as before, uninteresting, miserable, 
and sometimes even agonising. "The Colonel and 
Volodya spent hours playing billiards and picquet, 
Rita told anecdotes in the same languid, tasteless 
way, and Sofya Lvovna went about alone in hired 
sledges and kept begging her husband to take her 
for a good drive with three horses. 

Going almost every day to the nunnery, she 
wearied Olga, complaining of her unbearable mis- 
ery, weeping, and fecling as she did so that she 
brought with her into the cell something impure, 
pitiful, shabby. And Olga repeated to her mechanic- 
ally as though a lesson learnt by rote, that all this 
was of no consequence, that it would all pass and 
God would forgive her. 





THE TROUSSEAU 





° 
- 








THE-TROUSSEAU 


I HAVE seen a great many houses in my time, little 


and big, new and old, built of stone and of wood, 


but of one house I have kept a very vivid memory. 
It was, properly speaking, rather a cottage than a 
house — a tiny cottage of one story, with three win- 
dows, looking extraordinarily like a little old hunch- 
back woman with a cap on. Its white stucco walls, 
its tiled roof, and dilapidated chimney, were all 
drowned in a perfect sea of green. The cottage 
was lost to sight among the mulberry-trees, acacias, 
and poplars planted by the grandfathers and great- 
grandfathers of its present occupants. And yet it 
is a town house. Its wide courtyard stands in a row 
with other similar green courtyards, and forms part 
of a street. Nothing ever drives down that street, 
and very few persons are ever seen walking through 
it. 

The shutters of the little house are always closed; 
its occupants do not care for sunlight — the light 
is no use to them. ‘The windows are never opened, 
for they are not fond of fresh air. People who 
spend their lives in the midst of acacias, mulberries, 
and nettles have no passion for nature. It is only 
to the summer visitor that God has vouchsafed an 
eye for the beauties of nature. The rest of man- 

117 


118 The Darling and Other Stories 


kind remain steeped in profound ignorance of the 
existence of such beauties. People never prize what 
they have always had in abundance. ‘‘ What we 
have, we do not treasure,’ and what’s more we do 
not even love it. 

The little house stands in an earthly paradise 
of green trees with happy birds nesting in them. 
But inside... alas ... ! In summer, it is close 
and stifling within; in winter, hot as a Turkish bath, 
not one breath of air, and the dreariness! .. . 

The first time I visited the little house was many 
years ago on business. I brought a message from 
the Colonel who was the owner of the house to his 
wife and daughter. That first visit I remember very 
distinctly. It would be impossible, indeed, to for- 
get it. 

Imagine a limp little woman of forty, gazing at 
you with alarm and astonishment while you walk 
from the passage into the parlour. You are a 
stranger, a visitor, ‘“‘a young man”’; that’s enough 
to reduce her to a state of terror and bewilderment. 
Though you have no dagger, axe, or revolver in 
your hand, and though you smile attably, you are 
met with alarm. 

‘“Whom have I the honour and pleasure of ad- 
dressing?” the little lady asks in a trembling voice. 

I introduced myself and explained why I had come. 

The alarm and amazement were at once suc- 
ceeded by a shrill, joyful “Ach!” and she turned 
her eyes upwards to the ceiling. This “ Ach!” was 


The Trousseau 119 


caught up like an echo and repeated from the hall 
to the parlour, from the parlour to the kitchen, and 
so on down to the cellar. Soon the whole house was 
resounding with ‘‘ Ach!” in various voices. 

Five minutes later I was sitting on a big, soft, 
warm lounge in the drawing-room listening to the 
“Ach!” echoing all down the street. There was 
a smell of moth powder, and of goatskin shoes, a 
pair of which lay on a chair beside me wrapped in 
a handkerchief. In the windows were geraniums, 
and muslin curtains, and on the curtains were torpid 
flies. On the wall hung the portrait of some bishop, 
painted in oils, with the glass broken at one corner, 
and next to the bishop a row of ancestors with lemon- 
coloured faces of a gipsy type. On the table lay 
a thimble, a reel of cotton, and a half-knitted stock- 
ing, and paper patterns end a black blouse, tacked 
together, were lying on the floor. In the next room 
two alarmed and fluttered old women were hurriedly 
picking up similar patterns and pieces of tailor’s 
chalk from the floor. 

‘““ You must, please, excuse us; we are dreadfully 
untidy,” said the little lady. 

While she talked to me, she stole embarrassed 
glances towards the other room where the patterns 
were still being picked up. The door, too, seemed 
embarrassed, opening an inch or two and then shut- 
ting again. 

‘What's the matter?” said the little lady, ad- 
dressing the door. 


120 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Ou est mon cravatte lequel mon pére m’avait 
envoyé de Koursk?” asked a female voice at the 
door. 

“Ah, est-ce qué, Marie. «+ qué. . 24 Realy, 
it’s impossible. . . . Nous avons donc chez nous 
un homme peu connu de nous. Ask Lukerya.” 

“Flow well we speak French, though!” I read 
in the eyes of the little lady, who was flushing with 
pleasure. 

Soon afterwards the door opened and I saw a 
tall, thin girl of nineteen, in a long muslin dress 
with a gilt belt from which, I remember, hung a 
mother-of-pearl fan. She came in, dropped a curtsy, 
and flushed crimson. Her long nose, which was 
slightly pitted with smallpox, turned red first, and 
then the flush passed up to her eyes and her fore- 
head. 

‘““My daughter,” chanted the little lady, “ and, 
Manetchka, this is a young gentleman who has 
come,” etc. 

I was introduced, and expressed my surprise at 
the number of paper patterns. Mother and daugh- 
ter dropped their eyes. 

‘““We had a fair here at Ascension,” said the 
mother; ‘“‘ we always buy materials at the fair, and 
then it keeps us busy with sewing till the next year’s 
fair comes around again. We never put things out 
to be made. My husband's pay is not very ample, 
and we are not able to permit ourselves luxuries. 
So we have to make up everything ourselves.” 


a.” 


The Trousseau 12! 


‘“* But who will ever wear such a number of things? 
There are only two of you?” 

“Oh... as though we were thinking of wear- 
ing them! They are not to be worn; they are for 
the trousseau! ” 

‘Ah, mamam, what are you saying?” said the 
daughter, and she crimsoned again. ‘Our visitor 
might suppose it was true. I don’t intend to be mar- 
pied. Never!” 

She said this, but at the very word “ married” 
her eyes glowed. 

Tea, biscuits, butter, and jam were brought in, 
followed by raspberries and cream. At seven 
o'clock, we had supper, consisting of six courses, 
and while we were at supper I heard a loud yawn 
from the next room. I looked with surprise to- 
wards the door: it was a yawn that could only come 
from a man. 

‘“That’s my husband’s brother, Yegor Semyo- 
nitch,” the little lady explained, noticing my sur- 
prise. ‘‘ He’s been living with us for the last year. 
Please excuse him; he cannot come in to see you. 
He is such an unsociable person, he is shy with 
strangers. He is going into a monastery. He was 
unfairly treated in the service, and the disappoint- 
ment has preyed on his mind.” 

After supper the little lady showed the vestment 
which Yegor Semyonitch was embroidering with his 
own hands as an offering for the Church. Ma- 
netchka threw off her shyness for a moment and 


122 The Darling and Other Stories 


showed me the tobacco-pouch she was embroidering 
for her father. When I pretended to be greatly 
struck by her work, she flushed crimson and whis- 
pered something in her mother’s ear. The latter 
beamed all over, and invited me to go with her to the 
store-rroom. ‘There I was shown five large trunks, 
and a number of smaller trunks and boxes. 

‘This is her trousseau,’’ her mother whispered; 
‘we made it all ourselves.” 

After looking at these forbidding trunks I took 
leave of my hospitable hostesses. They made me 
promise to come and see them again some day. 

It happened that I was able to keep this promise. 
Seven years after my first visit, I was sent down 
to the little town to give expert evidence in a case 
that was being tried there. 

As I entered the little house I heard the same 
“Ach!” echo through it. They recognised me at 
once. ... Well they might! My first visit had 
been an event in their lives, and when events are few 
they are long remembered. 

I walked into the drawing-room: the mother, who 
had grown stouter and was already getting grey, 
was creeping about on the floor, cutting out some 
blue material. The daughter was sitting on the sofa, 
embroidering. 

There was the same smell of moth powder; there 
were the same patterns, the same portrait with the 
broken glass. But yet there was a change. Beside 
the portrait of the bishop hung a portrait of the 


The Trousseau 123 


ss 


Colonel, and the ladies were in mourning. The 
Colonel’s death had occurred a week after his pro- 
motion to be a general. 

Reminiscences began. ... The widow shed 
tears. 

‘“We have had a terrible loss,’ she said. ‘‘ My 
husband, you know, is dead. We are alone in the 
world now, and have no one but ourselves to look 
to. Yegor Semyonitch is alive, but I have no good 
news to tell of him. They would not have him in 
the monastery on account of — of intoxicating bev- 
erages. And now in his disappointment he drinks 
more thanever. Iam thinking of going to the Mar- 
shal of Nobility to lodge a complaint. Would you 
believe it, he has more than once broken open the 
trunks and . . . taken Manetchka’s trousseau and 
given it to beggars. He has taken everything out 
of two of the trunks! If he goes on like this, my 
Manetchka will be left without a trousseau at all.” 

“What are you saying, mamam?” said Ma- 
netchka, embarrassed. ‘ Our visitor might suppose 

. there’s no knowing what he might suppose. 
. . . I shall never — never marry.” 

Manetchka cast her eyes up to the ceiling with 
a look of hope and aspiration, evidently not for a 
moment believing what she said. 

A little bald-headed masculine figure in a brown 
coat and goloshes instead of boots darted like a 
mouse across the passage and disappeared. ‘“ Yegor 
Semyonitch, I suppose,” I thought. 


124 The Darling and Other Stories 


I looked at the mother and daughter together. 
They both looked much older and terribly changed. 
The mother’s hair was silvered, but the daughter 
was so faded and withered that her mother might 
have been taken for her elder sister, not more than 
five years her senior. 

‘“T have made up my mind to go to the Marshal,” 
the mother said to me, forgetting she had told me 
this already. ‘‘I mean to make a complaint. 
Yegor Semyonitch lays his hands on everything we 
make, and offers it up for the sake of his soul. My 
Manetchka is left without a trousseau.”’ 

Manetchka flushed again, but this time she said 
nothing. 

‘“We have to make them all over again. And 
God knows we are not so well off. We are all alone 
in the world now.” 

“We are alone in the world,’ repeated Ma- 
netchka. 

A year ago fate brought me once more to the 
little house. 

Walking into the drawing-room, I saw the old 
lady. Dressed all in black with heavy crape 
pleureuses, she was sitting on the sofa sewing. Be- 
side her sat the little old man in the brown coat and 
the goloshes instead of boots. On seeing me, he 
jumped up and ran out of the room. 

In response to my greeting, the old lady smiled 
and said: 

“Je suis charmée de vous revoir, monsieur.” 


The Trousseau 125 


“What are you making?” I asked, a little later. 

“It’s a blouse. When it’s finished I shall take 
it to the priest’s to be put away, or else Yegor 
Semyonitch would carry it off. J store everything 
at the priest’s now,” she added in a whisper. 

And looking at the portrait of her daughter which 
stood before her on the table, she sighed and said: 

“We are all alone in the world.” 

And where was the daughter? Where was 
Manetchka? I did not ask. I did not dare to ask 
the old mother dressed in her new deep mourning. 
And while I was in the room, and when I got 
up to go, no Manetchka came out to greet me. I[ 
did not hear her voice, nor her soft, timid foot- 
Beeps sss 

I understood, and my heart was heavy. 


a 

igen 

ppots oy 
= 


Ely ‘Ses Ton hates . . 
“A : 











THE HELPMATE 








THE HEEPMATE 


‘“Tve asked you not to tidy my table,” said Nikolay 
Yevgrafitch. ‘“‘ There’s no finding anything when 
you've tidied up. Where’s the telegram? Where 
have you thrown it? Be so good as to look for it. 
It's from Kazan, dated yesterday.” 

The maid —a pale, very slim girl with an indif- 
ferent expression — found several telegrams in the 
basket under the table, and handed them to the doc- 
tor without a word; but all these were telegrams 
from patients. Then they looked in the drawing- 
room, and in Olga Dmitrievna’s room. 

It was past midnight. Nikolay Yevgrafitch knew 
his wife would not be home very soon, not till five 
o’clock at least. He did not trust her, and when 
she was long away he could not sleep, was worried, 
and at the same time he despised his wife, and her 
bed, and her looking-glass, and her boxes of sweets, 
and the hyacinths, and the lilies of the valley which 
were sent her every day by some one or other, and 
which diffused the sickly fragrance of a florist’s shop 
all over the house. On such nights he became petty, 
ill-humoured, irritable, and he fancied now that it 
was very necessary for him to have the telegram he 

129 


130 The Darling and Other Stories 


had received the day before from his brother, though 
it contained nothing but Christmas greetings. 

On the table of his wife’s room under the box of 
stationery he found a telegram, and glanced at it 
casually. It was addressed to his wife, care of his 
mother-in-law, from Monte Carlo, and_ signed 
Michel. . . . The doctor did not understand one 
word of it, as it was in some foreign language, ap- 
parently English. 

‘““Who is this Michel? Why Monte Carlo? 
Why directed care of her mother? ”’ 

During the seven years of his married life he had 
grown used to being suspicious, guessing, catching at 
clues, and it had several times occurred to him, that 
his exercise at home had qualified him to become an 
excellent detective. Going into his study and be- 
ginning to reflect, he recalled at once how he had 
been with his wife in Petersburg a year and a half 
ago, and had lunched with an old school-fellow, a 
civil engineer, and how that engineer had intro- 
duced to him and his wife a young man of two or 
three and twenty, called Mihail Ivanovitch, with 
rather a curious short surname — Riss. Two 
months later the doctor had seen the young man’s 
photograph in his wife’s album, with an inscription 
in French: ‘‘ In remembrance of the present and in 
hope of the future.” Later on he had met the 
young man himself at his mother-in-law’s. And 
that was at the time when his wife had taken to be- 
ing very often absent and coming home at four or 


The Helpmate Tat 


five o'clock in the morning, and was constantly ask- 
ing him to get her a passport for abroad, which he 
kept refusing to do; and a continual feud went on 
in the house which made him feel ashamed to face 
the servants. 

Six months before, his colleagues had decided that 
he was going into consumption, and advised him to 
throw up everything and go to the Crimea. When 
she heard of this, Olga Dmitrievna affected to be 
very much alarmed; she began to be affectionate to 
her husband, and kept assuring him that it would 
be cold and dull in the Crimea, and that he had 
much better go to Nice, and that she would go with 
him, and there would nurse him, look after him, take 
care of him. 

Now, he understood why his wife was so particu- 
larly anxious to go to Nice: her Michel lived at 
Monte Carlo. 

He took an English dictionary, and translating 
the words, and guessing their meaning, by degrees 
he put together the following sentence: ‘I drink 
to the health of my beloved darling, and kiss her 
little foot a thousand times, and am impatiently ex- 
pecting her arrival.” He pictured the pitiable, lu- 
dicrous part he would play if he had agreed to go 
to Nice with his wife. He felt so mortified that 
he almost shed tears and began pacing to and fro 
through all the rooms of the flat in great agitation. 
His pride, his plebeian fastidiousness, was revolted. 
Clenching his fists and scowling with disgust, he 


132 The Darling and Other Stories 


wondered how he, the son of a village priest, 
brought up in a clerical school, a plain, straightfor- 
ward man, a surgeon by profession — how could he 
have let himself be enslaved, have sunk into such 
shameful bondage to this weak, worthless, merce- 
nary, low creature. 

““* Tittle foot’! ’’ he muttered to himself, crump- 
ling up the telegram; “‘‘ little foot ’!” 

Of the time when he fell in love and proposed to 
her, and the seven years that he had been living 
with her, all that remained in his memory was her 
long, fragrant hair, a mass of soft lace, and her lit- 
tle feet, which certainly were very small, beautiful 
feet; and even now it seemed as though he still had 
from those old embraces the feeling of lace and silk 
upon his hands and face—and nothing more. 
Nothing more —that is, not counting hysterics, 
shrieks, reproaches, threats, and lies — brazen, 
treacherous lies. He remembered how in his fa- 
ther’s house in the village a bird would sometimes 
chance to fly in from the open air into the house 
and would struggle desperately against the window- 
panes and upset things; so this woman from a class 
utterly alien to him had flown into his life and made 
complete havoc of it. The best years of his life 
had been spent as though in hell, his hopes for hap- 
piness shattered and turned into a mockery, his 
health gone, his rooms as vulgar in their atmosphere 
as a cocotte’s, and of the ten thousand he earned 
every year he could never save ten roubles to send 


The Helpmate 133 


his old mother in the village, and his debts were al- 
ready about fifteen thousand. It seemed that if a 
band of brigands had been living in his rooms his 
life would not have been so hopelessly, so irremedi- 
ably ruined as by the presence of this woman. 

He began coughing and gasping for breath. He 
ought to have gone to bed and got warm, but he 
could not. He kept walking about the rooms, or 
sat down to the table, nervously fidgeting with a pen- 
cil and scribbling mechanically on a paper. 

Porying apen, . ... A-little foot.” 

By five o’clock he grew weaker and threw all the 
blame on himself. It seemed to him now that if 
Olga Dmitrievna had married some one else who 
might have had a good influence over her — who 
knows? — she might after all have become a good, 
straightforward woman. He was a poor psycholo- 
gist, and knew nothing of the female heart; besides, 
he was churlish, uninteresting. . . . 

“T haven’t long to live now,” he thought. “I 
am a dead man, and ought not to stand in the 
way of the living. It would be strange and stupid 
to insist upon one’s rights now. I'll have it out 
with her; let her go to the man she loves... . I'll 
give her a divorce. I'll take the blame on my- 
celts" 

Olga Dmitrievna came in at last, and she walked 
into the study and sank into a chair just as she was 
in her white cloak, hat, and overboots. 

“The nasty, fat boy,”’ she said with a sob, breath- 


134 The Darling and Other Stories 


ing hard. “It’s really dishonest; it’s disgusting.” 
She stamped. “I can’t put up with it; I can’t, I 
cael 

‘“What’s the matter?’’ asked Nikolay Yevgra- 
fitch, going up to her. 

‘That student, Azarbekov, was seeing me home, 
and he lost my bag, and there was fifteen roubles in 
it. I borrowed it from mamma.” 

She was crying in a most genuine way, like a little 
girl, and not only her handkerchief, but even her 
gloves, were wet with tears. 

“Itcan’t be helped!” said the doctor; “"ifites 
lost it, he’s lost it, and it’s no good worrying over it. 
Calm yourself; I want to talk to you.” 

‘“T am not a millionaire to lose money like that. 
He says he’ll pay it back, but I don’t believe him; 
Heanor <a sc" 

Her husband begged her to calm herself and to 
listen to him, but she kept on talking of the student 
and of the fifteen roubles she had lost. 

“Ach! I'll give you twenty-five roubles to-mor- 
row if you'll only hold your tongue!” he said irri- 
tably. 

‘“T must take off my things!” she said, crying. 
“T can’t talk seriously in my fur coat! How 
strange you are!” 

He helped her off with her coat and overboots, 
detecting as he did so the smell of the white wine 
she liked to drink with oysters (in spite of her 
etherealness she ate and drank a great deal). She 


The Helpmate 135 


went into her room and came back soon after, hav- 
ing changed her things and powdered her face, 
though her eyes still showed traces of tears. She 
sat down, retreating into her light, lacy dressing- 
gown, and in the mass of billowy pink her husband 
could see nothing but her hair, which she had let 
down, and her little foot wearing a slipper. 

‘“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, 
swinging herself in a rocking-chair. 

‘““T happened to see this;’’ and he handed her the 
telegram. 

She read it and shrugged her shoulders. 

““Well?”’ she said, rocking herself faster. 
“That’s the usual New Year’s greeting and nothing 
else. 1 here are no sectets in it.” 

“You are reckoning on my not knowing Eng- 
lish. No, I don’t know it; but I have a dictionary. 
That telegram is from Riss; he drinks to the health 
of his beloved and sends you a thousand kisses. But 
let us leave that,” the doctor went on hurriedly. 
‘“T don’t in the least want to reproach you or make 
a scene. We've had scenes and reproaches enough; 


it’s time to make an end of them. . . . This is what 
I want to say to you: you are free, and can live as 
you like.” 


There was a silence. She began crying quietly. 

“TI set you free from the necessity of lying and 
keeping up pretences,’ Nikolay Yevgrafitch contin- 
ued. “If you love that young man, love him; if 
you want to go abroad to him, go. You are young, 


136 The Darling and Other Stories 


healthy, and I am a wreck, and haven't long to live. 
In short . . . you understand me.” 

He was agitated and could not goon. Olga Dmi- 
trievna, crying and speaking in a voice of self-pity, 
acknowledged that she loved Riss, and used to drive 
out of town with him and see him in his rooms, and 
now she really did long to go abroad. 

“You see, I hide nothing from you,” she added, 
with a sigh. ‘‘ My whole soul lies open before you. 
And I beg you again, be generous, get me a pass- 
port.” 

““l repeat, you are free.” 

She moved to another seat nearer him to look at 
the expression of his face. She did not believe him 
and wanted now to understand his secret meaning. 
She never did believe any one, and however gen- 
erous were their intentions, she always suspected 
some petty or ignoble motive or selfish object in 
them. And when she looked searchingly into his 
face, it seemed to him that there was a gleam of green 
light in her eyes as in a cat’s. 

““When shall I get the passport?” she asked 
softly. 

He suddenly had an impulse to say ‘“‘ Never’”’; 
but he restrained himself and said: 

‘* When you like.” 

**T shall only go for a month.” 

“You'll go to Riss for good. I'll get you a di- 
vorce, take the blame on myself, and Riss can marry 
you.” 


The Helpmate 137 


“But I don’t want a divorce!’ Olga Dmitrievna 
retorted quickly, with an astonished face. ‘“‘I am 
not asking you for a divorce! Get me a passport, 
that’s.all.” 

“But why don’t you want the divorce?” asked 
the doctor, beginning to feel irritated. ‘‘ You are 
a strange woman. How strange you are! If you 
are fond of him in earnest and he loves you too, 
in your position you can do nothing better than get 
married. Can you really hesitate between marriage 
and adultery?” 

‘“T understand you,” she said, walking away from 
him, and a spiteful, vindictive expression came into 
her face. “I understand you perfectly. You are 
sick of me, and you simply want to get rid of me, 
to force this divorce on me. ‘Thank you very much; 
I am not such a fool as you think. I won’t accept 
the divorce and I won’t leave you—-I won't, I 
won't! To begin with, I don’t want to lose my 
position in society,” she continued quickly, as though 
afraid of being prevented from speaking. ‘“‘Sec- 
ondly, I am twenty-seven and Riss is only twenty- 
three; he’ll be tired of me in a year and throw me 
over. And what’s more, if you care to know, I’m 
not certain that my feeling will last long ... so 
there! I’m not going to leave you.” 

“Then [ll turn you out of the house! ”’ shouted 
Nikolay Yevgraftch, stamping. “TI shall turn you 
out, you vile, loathsome woman! ”’ 

“We shall see!” she said, and went out. 


138 The Darling and Other Stories 


It was broad daylight outside, but the doctor still 
sat at the table moving the pencil over the paper 
and writing mechanically. 

many dear Siti. < 2 Hottie foot” 

Or he walked about and stopped in the drawing- 
room before a photograph taken seven years ago, 
soon after his marriage, and looked at it for a long 
time. It was a family group: his father-in-law, his 
mother-in-law, his wife Olga Dmitrievna when she 
was twenty, and himself in the role of a happy young 
husband. His father-in-law, a clean-shaven, drop- 
sical privy councillor, crafty and avaricious; his 
mother-in-law, a stout lady with small predatory 
features like a weasel, who loved her daughter to 
distraction and helped her in everything; if her 
daughter were strangling some one, the mother 
would not have protested, but would only have 
screened her with her skirts. Olga Dmitrievna, too, 
had small predatory-looking features, but more 
expressive and bolder than her mother’s; she was 
not a weasel, but a beast on a bigger scale! And 
Nikolay Yevgrafitch himself in the photograph 
looked such a guileless soul, such a kindly, good fel- 
low, so open and simple-hearted; his whole face was 
relaxed in the naive, good-natured smile of a divin- 
ity student, and he had had the simplicity to be- 
lieve that that company of beasts of prey into which 
destiny had chanced to thrust him would give him 
romance and happiness and all he had dreamed of 
when as a student he used to sing the song “* Youth 


The Heipmate 139 


is wasted, life is nought, when the heart is cold and 
loveless.” 

And once more he asked himself in perplexity 
how he, the son of a village priest, with his demo- 
cratic bringing up —a piain, blunt, straightforward 
man — could have so helplessly surrendered to the 
power of this worthless, false, vulgar, petty creature, 
whose nature was so utterly alien to him. 

When at eleven o’clock he put on his coat to go to 
the hospital the servant came into his study. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

‘The mistress has got up and asks you for the 
twenty-five roubles you promised her yesterday.” 





ite al eS 











TALENT 


AN artist called Yegor Savvitch, who was spending 
his summer holidays at the house of an officer’s 
widow, was sitting on his bed, given up to the de- 
pression of morning. It was beginning to look like 
autumn out of doors. Heavy, clumsy clouds cov- 
ered the sky in thick layers; there was a cold, pierc- 
ing wind, and with a plaintive wail the trees were all 
bending on one side. He could see the yellow leaves 
whirling round in the air and on the earth. Fare- 
well, summer! This melancholy of nature is beau- 
tiful and poetical in its own way, when it is looked 
at with the eyes of an artist, but Yegor Savvitch 
was in no humour to see beauty. He was devoured 
by ennui and his only consolation was the thought 
that by to-morrow he would not be there. The bed, 
the chairs, the tables, the floor, were all heaped up 
with cushions, crumpled bed-clothes, boxes. The 
floor had not been swept, the cotton curtains had 
been taken down from the windows. Next day he 
was moving, to town. 

His landlady, the widow, was out. She had 
gone off somewhere to hire horses and carts to move 
next day to town. Profiting by the absence of her 
severe mamma, her daughter Katya, aged twenty, 
had for a long time been sitting in the young man’s 

a 143 


144 The Darling and Other Stories 


room. Next day the painter was going away, and 
she had a great deal to say to him. She kept talk- 
ing, talking, and yet she felt that she had not said 
a tenth of what she wanted to say. With her eyes 
full of tears, she gazed at his shaggy head, gazed 
at it with rapture and sadness. And Yegor Sav- 
vitch was shaggy to a hideous extent, so that he 
looked like a wild animal. His hair hung down 
to his shoulder-blades, his beard grew from his neck, 
from his nostrils, from his ears; his eyes were lost 
under his thick overhanging brows. It was all so 
thick, so matted, that if a fly or a beetle had been 
caught in his hair, it would never have found its way 
out of this enchanted thicket. Yegor Savvitch lis- 
tened to Katya, yawning. He was tired. When 
Katya began whimpering, he looked severely at her 
from his overhanging eyebrows, frowned, and said 
in a heavy, deep bass: 

“T cannot marry.” 

“Why not?” Katya asked softly. 

‘“‘ Because for a painter, and in fact any man who 
lives for art, marriage is out of the question. An 
artist must be free.” 

‘“* But in what way should I hinder you, Yegor Sav- 
vitch?” 

‘““T am not speaking of myself, I am speaking in 
general. . . . Famous authors and painters have 
never married.” 

“And you, too, will be famous —TI understand 
that perfectly. But put yourself in my place. I 


Talent 145 


am afraid of my mother. She is stern and irritable. 
When she knows that you won’t marry me, and that 
it’s all nothing . . . she'll begin to give it to me. 
Oh, how wretched Iam! And you haven’t paid for 
veur rooms, ¢ither! =...” 

=Damn her! I'll pay.” 

Yegor Savvitch got up and began walking to and 
fro. 

‘“T ought to be abroad!” he said. And the ar- 
tist told her that nothing was easier than to go 
abroad. One need do nothing but paint a picture 
and sell it. 

‘““Of course!’ Katya assented. ‘“‘ Why haven't 
you painted one in the summer?” 

‘Do you suppose I can work in a barn like this?” 
the artist said ill-humouredly. ‘‘ And where should 
I get models?” 

Some one banged the door viciously in the storey 
below. Katya, who was expecting her mother’s re- 
turn from minute to minute, jumped up and ran 
away. The artist was left alone. For a long time 
he walked to and fro, threading his way between 
the chairs and the piles of untidy objects of all sorts. 
He heard the widow rattling the crockery and loudly 
abusing the peasants who had asked her two roubles 
for each cart. In his disgust Yegor Savvitch 
stopped before the cupboard and stared for a long 
while, frowning at the decanter of vodka. 

‘“ Ah, blast you!’ he heard the widow railing at 
Katya. ‘‘ Damnation take you!” 


146 ‘The Darling and Other Stories 


The artist drank a glass of vodka, and the dark 
cloud in his soul gradually disappeared, and he felt 
as though all his inside was smiling within him. He 
began dreaming. . . . His fancy pictured how he 
would become great. He could not imagine his fu- 
ture works but he could see distinctly how the papers 
would talk of him, how the shops would sell his pho- 
tographs, with what envy his friends would look after 
him. He tried to picture himself in a magnificent 
drawing-room surrounded by pretty and adoring 
women; but the picture was misty, vague, as he had 
never in his life seen a drawing-room. ‘The pretty 
and adoring women were not a success either, for, 
except Katya, he knew no adoring woman, not even 
one respectable girl. People who know nothing 
about life usually picture life from books, but Yegor 
Savvitch knew no books either. He had tried to 
read Gogol, but had fallen asleep on the second 
page. 

‘Tt won’t burn, drat the thing!” the widow 
bawled down below, as she set the samovar. 
‘“‘ Katya, give me some charcoal! ”’ 

The dreamy artist felt a longing to share his 
hopes and dreams with some one. He went down- 
stairs into the kitchen, where the stout widow and 
Katya were busy about a dirty stove in the midst 
of charcoal fumes from the samovar. There he sat 
down on a bench close to a big pot and began: 

‘It’s a fine thing to be an artist! I can go just 
where I like, do what I like. One has not to work 


Talent 147 


in an office or in the fields. I’ve no superiors or 
oficers over me. . . . I’m my own superior. And 
with all that I’m doing good to humanity! ” 

And after dinner he composed himself for a 
‘rest.’ He usually slept till the twilight of eve- 
ning. But this time soon after dinner he felt that 
some one was pulling at his leg. Some one kept 
laughing and shouting his name. He opened his 
eyes and saw his friend Ukleikin, the landscape 
painter, who had been away all the summer in the 
Kostroma district. 

‘’ Bah!” he cried, delighted. ‘‘ What doI see?” 

There followed handshakes, questions. 

“Well, have you brought anything? I suppose 
you’ve knocked off hundreds of sketches?” said 
Yegor Savvitch, wathing Ukleikin taking his belong- 
ings out of his trunk. 

“tim!... Yes. I. have done ‘something. 
And how are you getting on? Have you been paint- 
ing anything? ”’ 

Yegor Savvitch dived behind the bed, and crim- 
son in the face, extracted a canvas in a frame cov- 
ered with dust and spider webs. 

“See here. . . . A girl at the window after part- 
ing from her betrothed. In three sittings. Not 
neary finished yet.” 

The picture represented Katya faintly outlined sit- 
ting at an open Window, from which could be seen 
a garden and lilac distance. Ukleikin did not like 
the picture. 


148 The Darling and Other Stories 


Elm!) dere 1s air'and 4... andes 
expression,” he said. ‘“ There’s a feeling of dis- 
tance,’ but. ... but that: bush ‘ts -screanime 72 
screaming horribly! ” 

The decanter was brought on to the scene. 

Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising 
beginner, an historical painter, came in to see Yegor 
Savvitch. He was a friend staying at the next villa, 
and was a man of five-and-thirty. He had long 
hair, and wore a blouse with a Shakespeare collar, 
and had a dignified manner. Seeing the vodka, he 
frowned, complained of his chest, but yielding to his 
friends’ entreaties, drank a glass. 

‘“Tve thought of a subject, my friends,” he be- 
gan, getting drunk. “I want to paint some new 

. Herod or Clepentian, or some blackguard of 
that description, you understand, and to contrast 
with him the idea of Christianity. On the one side 
Rome, you understand, and on the other Christian- 
ity. . . . I want to represent the spirit, you under- 
ead? ee spirit!” 

And the widow downstairs shouted continually: 

‘Katya, give me the cucumbers! Go to Sido- 
rov’s and get some kvass, you jade!” 

Like wolves in a cage, the three friends kept pac- 
ing to and fro from one end of the room to the 
other. They talked without ceasing, talked, hotly 
and genuinely; all three were excited, carried away. 
To listen to them it would seem they had the fu- 
ture, fame, money, in their hands. And it never oc- 


Talent 149 


curred to either of them that time was passing, that 
every day life was nearing its close, that they had 
lived at other people’s expense a great deal and 
nothing yet was accomplished; that they were all 
bound by the inexorable law by which of a hundred 
promising beginners only two or three rise to any 
position and all the others draw blanks in the lot- 
tery, perish playing the part of flesh for the cannon. 
. . . [hey were gay and happy, and looked the fu- 
ture boldly in the face! 

At one o'clock in the morning Kostyliov said 
good-bye, and smoothing out his Shakespeare collar, 
went home. ‘The landscape painter remained to 
sleep at Yegor Savvitch’s. Before going to bed, 
Yegor Savvitch took a candle and made his way into 
the kitchen to get a drink of water. In the dark, 
narrow passage Katya was sitting, on a box, and, 
with her hands clasped on her knees, was looking 
upwards. A blissful smile was straying on her pale, 
exhausted face, and her eyes were beaming. 

“Ts that you? What are you thinking about?” 
Yegor Savvitch asked her. 

“T am thinking of how you'll be famous,” she 
said in a half-whisper. ‘‘ I keep fancying how you'll 
become a famous man... . I overheard all your 
talk. keep aasenne cad dreaming. . . .”’ 

oe went off into a happy laugh, cried, ee iid 
her hands reverently on her idol’s shoulders. 








AN ARTIST’S STORY 











BN ARLTISPS STORY 
I 


Ir was six or seven years ago when I was living in 
one of the districts of the province of T , on 
the estate of a young landowner called Byelokurov, 
who used to get up very early, wear a peasant tunic, 
drink beer in the evenings, and continually complain 
to me that he never met with sympathy from any 
one. He lived in the lodge in the garden, and I in 
the old seigniorial house, in a big room with col- 
umns, where there was no furniture except a wide 
sofa on which I used to sleep, and a table on which 
I used to lay out patience. ‘There was always, even 
in still weather, a droning noise in the old Amos 
stoves, and in thunder-storms the whole house shook 
and seemed to be cracking into pieces; and it was 
rather terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten 
big windows were suddenly lit up by lightning. 

Condemned by destiny to perpetual idleness, I did 
absolutely nothing. For hours together I gazed out 
of window at the sky, at the birds, at the avenue, 
read everything that was brought me by post, slept. 
Sometimes I went out of the house and wandered 
about till late in the evening. 

One day as I was returning home, I accidentally 

153 





154 The Darling and Other Stories 


strayed into a place I did not know. The sun was 
already sinking, and the shades of evening lay across 
the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, 
very tall fir-trees stood like two dense walls form- 
ing a picturesque, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed 
over the fence and walked along the avenue, slip- 
ping over the fir-needles which lay two inches deep 
on the ground. It was still and dark, and only 
here and there on the high tree-tops the vivid golden 
light quivered and made rainbows in the spiders’ 
webs. There was a strong, almost stifling smell of 
resin. ‘Then I turned into a long avenue of limes. 
Here, too, all was desolation and age; last year’s 
leaves rusted mournfully under my feet and in the 
twilight shadows lurked between the trees. From 
the old orchard on the right came the faint, reluct- 
ant note of the golden oriole, who must have been 
old too. But at last the limes ended. I walked by 
an old white house of two storeys with a terrace, 
and there suddenly opened before me a view of a 
courtyard, a large pond with a bathing-house, a 
group of green willows, and a village on the further 
bank, with a high, narrow belfry on which there glit- 
tered a cross reflecting the setting sun. 

For a moment it breathed upon me the fascina- 
tion of something near and very familiar, as though 
I had seen that landscape at some time in my child- 
hood. 

At the white stone gates which led from the 
yard to the fields, old-fashioned solid gates with 


An Artist’s Story 155 


lions on them, were standing two girls. One of 
them, the elder, a slim, pale, very handsome girl 
with a perfect haystack of chestnut hair and a little 
obstinate mouth, had a severe expression and scarcely 
took notice of me, while the other, who was still 
very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen, 
and was also slim and pale, with a large mouth and 
large eyes, looked at me with astonishment as I 
passed by, said something in English, and was over- 
come with embarrassment. And it seemed to me 
that these two charming faces, too, had long been 
familiar to me. And I returned home feeling as 
though I had had a delightful dream. 

One morning soon afterwards, as Byelokurov and 
I were walking near the house, a carriage drove un- 
expectedly into the yard, rustling over the grass, 
and in it was sitting one of those girls. It was the 
elder one. She had come to ask for subscriptions 
for some villagers whose cottages had been burnt 
down. Speaking with great earnestness and preci- 
sion, and not looking at us, she told us how many 
houses in the village of Siyanovo had been burnt, 
how many men, women, and children were left home- 
less, and what steps were proposed, to begin with, 
by the Relief Committee, of which she was now a 
member. After handing us the subscription list for 
our signatures, she put it away and immediately be- 
gan to take leave of us. 

‘““You have quite forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovitch,” 
she said to Byelokurov as she shook hands with 


156 The Darling and Other Stories 


him. ‘‘Do come, and if Monsieur N. (she men- 
tioned my name) cares to make the acquaintance of 
admirers of his work, and will come and see us, 
mother and I will be delighted.” 

I bowed. 

When she had gone Pyotr Petrovitch began to 
tell me about her. The girl was, he said, of good 
family, and her name was Lidia Voltchaninov, and 
the estate on which she lived with her mother and 
sister, like the village on the other side of the pond, 
was called Shelkovka. Her father had once held 
an important position in Moscow, and had died with 
the rank of privy councillor. Although they had 
ample means, the Voltchaninovs lived on their es- 
tate summer and winter without going away. Lidia 
was a teacher in the Zemstvo school in her own vil- 
lage, and received a salary of twenty-five roubles 
a month. She spent nothing on herself but her sal- 
ary, and was proud of earning her own living. 


“An interesting family,’ said Byelokurov. 
‘“‘ Let us go over one day. They will be delighted to 
see you.” 


One afternoon on a holiday we thought of the 
Voltchaninovs, and went to Shelkovka to see them. 
They —the mother and two daughters — were at 
home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, who at 
one time had been handsome, but now, asthmatic, 
depressed, vague, and over-feeble for her years, 
tried to entertain me with conversation about paint- 
ing. Having heard from her daughter that I might 


An Artist’s Story 157 


come to Shelkovka, she had hurriedly recalled two 
or three of my landscapes which she had seen in ex- 
hibitions in Moscow, and now asked what I meant 
to express by them. Lidia, or as they called her 
Lida, talked more to Byelokurov than to me. 
Earnest and unsmiling, she asked him why he was 
not on the Zemstvo, and why he had not attended 
any of its meetings. 

“Tt’s not right, Pyotr Petrovitch,” she said re- 
proachfully. “It’s not right. It’s too bad.” 

‘“* That’s true, Lida — that’s true,” the mother as- 
sented. “It isn’t right.” 

‘Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin,” 
Lida went on, addressing me. ‘‘ He is the chair- 
man of the Zemstvo Board, and he has distributed 
all the posts in the district among his nephews and 
sons-in-law; and he does as he likes. He ought to 
be opposed. The young men ought to make a 
strong party, but you sce what the young men among 
us are like. It’s a shame, Pyotr Petrovitch!”’ 

The younger sister, Genya, was silent while they 
were talking of the Zemstvo. She took no part in 
serious conversation. She was not looked upon as 
quite grown up by her family, and, like a child, was 
always called by the nickname of Misuce, because 
that was what she had called her English governess 
when she was a child. She was all the time look- 
ing at me with curiosity, and when I glanced at the 
photographs in the album, she explained to me: 
‘““That’s uncle . . . that’s god-father,” moving her 


158 The Darling and Other Stories 


finger across the photograph. As she did so she 
touched me with her shoulder like a child, and I had 
a close view of her delicate, undeveloped chest, her 
slender shoulders, her plait, and her thin little body 
tightly drawn in by her sash. 

We played croquet and lawn tennis, we walked 
about the garden, drank tea, and then sat a long 
time over supper. After the huge empty room with 
columns, I felt, as it were, at home in this small 
snug house where there were no oleographs on the 
walls and where the servants were spoken to with 
civility. And everything seemed to me young and 
pure, thanks to the presence of Lida and Misuce, 
and there was an atmosphere of refinement over 
everything. At supper Lida talked to Byelokurov 
again of the Zemstvo, of Balagin, and of school 
libraries. She was an energetic, genuine girl, with 
convictions, and it was interesting to listen to her, 
though she talked a great deal and in a loud voice 
— perhaps because she was accustomed to talking 
at school. On the other hand, Pyotr Petrovitch, 
who had retained from his student days the habit 
of turning every conversation into an argument, was 
tedious, flat, long-winded, and unmistakably anxious 
to appear clever and advanced. Gesticulating, he 
upset a sauce-boat with his sleeve, making a huge 
pool on the tablecloth, but no one except me ap- 
peared to notice it. 

It was dark and still as we went home. 

‘Good breeding is shown, not by not upsetting 


An Artist’s Story 159 


the sauce, but by not noticing it when somebody 
else does,’ said Byelokurov, with a sigh. ‘ Yes, a 
splendid, intellectual family! I’ve dropped out of 
all decent society; it’s dreadful how I’ve dropped out 
of it! It’s all through work, work, work!” 

He talked of how hard one had to work if one 
wanted to be a model farmer. And IJ thought what 
a heavy, sluggish fellow he was! Whenever he 
talked of anything serious he articulated “ Er-er ” 
with intense effort, and worked just as he talked — 
slowly, always late and behind-hand. TI had little 
faith in his business capacity if only from the fact 
that when I gave him letters to post he carried them 
about in his pocket for weeks together. 

‘The hardest thing of all,’’ he muttered as he 
walked beside me —“ the hardest thing of all is that, 
work as one may, one meets with no sympathy from 
any one. No sympathy!” 


II 


I took to going to see the Voltchaninovs. As a 
rule I sat on the lower step of the terrace; I was 
fretted by dissatisfaction with myself; I was sorry 
at the thought of my life passing so rapidly and un- 
interestingly, and felt as though I would like to tear 
out of my breast the heart which had grown so 
heavy. And meanwhile I heard talk on the terrace, 
the rustling of dresses, the pages of a book being 
turned. I soon grew accustomed to the idea that 
during the day Lida received patients, gave out 


160 The Darling and Other Stories 


books, and often went into the village with a parasol 
and no hat, and in the evening talked aloud of the 
Zemstvo and schools. This slim, handsome, in- 
variably austere girl, with her small well-cut mouth, 
always said dryly when the conversation turned on 
serious subjects: 

‘That’s of no interest to you.” 

She did not like me. She disliked me because I 
was a landscape painter and did not in my pictures 
portray the privations of the peasants, and that, 
as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she put such 
faith in. I remember when I was travelling on the 
banks of Lake Baikal, I met a Buriat girl on horse- 
back, wearing a shirt and trousers of blue Chinese 
canvas; I asked her if she would sell me her pipe. 
While we talked she looked contemptuously at my 
Furopean face and hat, and in a moment she was 
bored with talking to me; she shouted to her horse 
and galloped on. And in just the same way Lida 
despised me as an alien. She never outwardly ex- 
pressed her dislike for me, but I felt it, and sitting 
on the lower step of the terrace, I felt irritated, 
and said that doctoring peasants when one was not 
a doctor was deceiving them, and that it was easy to 
be benevolent when one had six thousand acres. 

Meanwhile her sister Misuce had no cares, and 
spent her life in complete idleness just as I did. 
When she got up in the morning she immediately 
took up a book and sat down to read on the ter- 
race in a deep arm-chair, with her feet hardly touch- 


An Artist’s Story 161 


ing the ground, or hid herself with her book in the 
lime avenue, or walked out into the fields. She spent 
the whole day reading, poring greedily over her 
book, and only from the tired, dazed look in her 
eyes and the extreme paleness of her face one could 
divine how this continual reading exhausted her 
brain. When I arrived she would flush a little, 
leave her book, and looking into my face with her 
big eyes, would tell me eagerly of anything that had 
happened — for instance, that the chimney had been 
on fire in the servants’ hall, or that one of the men 
had caught a huge fish in the pond. On ordinary 
days she usually went about in a light blouse and a 
dark blue skirt. We went for walks together, 
picked cherries for making jam, went out in the boat. 
When she jumped up to reach a cherry or sculled in 
the boat, her thin, weak arms showed through her 
transparent sleeves. Or I painted a sketch, and she 
stood beside me watching rapturously. 

One Sunday at the end of July I came to the 
Voltchaninovs about nine o’clock in the morning. I 
walked about the park, keeping a good distance from 
the house, looking for white mushrooms, of which 
there was a great number that summer, and noting 
their position so as to come and pick them after- 
wards with Genya. There was a warm breeze. I 
saw Genya and her mother both in light holiday 
dresses coming home from church, Genya holding 
her hat inthe wind. Afterwards I heard them hav- 
ing tea on the terrace. 


162 The Darling and Other Stories 


For a careless person like me, trying to find jus- 
tification for my perpetual idleness, these holiday 
mornings in our country-houses in the summer have 
always had a particular charm. When the green 
garden, still wet with dew, is all sparkling in the 
sun and looks radiant with happiness, when there 
is a scent of mignonette and oleander near the 
house, when the young people have just come back 
from church and are having breakfast in the gar- 
den, all so charmingly dressed and gay, and one 
knows that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome peo- 
ple are going to do nothing the whole long day, one 
wishes that all life were like that. Now, too, I had 
the same thought, and walked about the garden pre- 
pared to walk about like that, aimless and unoccu- 
pied, the whole day, the whole summer. 

Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in 
her face as though she knew she would find me in 
the garden, or had a presentiment of it. We gath- 
ered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked 
a question she walked a little ahead so as to see my 
Lace. 

‘“A miracie happened in the village yesterday,” 
she said. ‘‘ The lame woman Pelagea has been ill 
the whole year. No doctors or medicines did her 
any good; but yesterday an old woman came and 
whispered something over her, and her illness passed 
away.” 

“That's nothing much,” I said. ‘‘ You mustn’t 


An Artist’s Story 163 


look for miracles only among sick people and old 
women. Isn’t health a miracle? And life itself? 
Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle.” 

‘““ And aren’t you afraid of what is beyond under- 
standing?” 

“No. Phenomena I don’t understand I face 
boldly, and am not overwhelmed by them. I am 
above them. Man ought to recognise himself as 
superior to lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything 
in nature, even what seems miraculous and is beyond 
his understanding, or else he is not a man, but a 
mouse afraid of everything.” 

Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very 
great deal, and could guess correctly what I did not 
know. She longed for me to initiate her into the 
domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful — into that 
higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite 
at home. And she talked to me of God, of the 
eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who could 
never admit that my self and my imagination would 
be lost forever after death, answered: ‘‘ Yes, men 
are immortal ’’; ‘‘ Yes, there is eternal life in store 
for us.’ And she listened, believed, and did not ask 
for proofs. 

As we were going home she stopped suddenly and 
said: 

‘““Our Lida is a remarkable person — isn’t she? 
I love her very dearly, and would be ready to give 
my life for her any minute. But tell me ’— Genya 


164 The Darling and Other Stories 


touched my sleeve with her finger —“ tell me, why 
do you always argue with her? Why are you irri- 
tated?” 

‘“ Because she is wrong.” 

Genya shook her head and tears came into her 
eyes. 

‘‘ How incomprehensible that is!” she said. 

At that minute Lida had just returned from 
somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand, 
a slim, beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, 
she was giving some orders to one of the men. 
Talking loudly, she hurriedly received two or three 
sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious face she 
walked about the rooms, opening one cupboard after 
another, and went upstairs. It was a long time 
before they could find her and call her to dinner, 
and she came in when we had finished our soup. 
All these tiny details I remember with tenderness, 
and that whole day I remember vividly, though noth- 
ing special happened. After dinner Genya lay in 
a long arm-chair reading, while I sat upon the bot- 
tom step of the terrace. We were silent. The 
whole sky was overcast with clouds, and it began to 
spot with fine rain. It was hot; the wind had 
dropped, and it seemed as though the day would 
never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on the 
terrace, looking drowsy and carrying a fan. 

“Oh, mother,” said Genya, kissing her hand, 
“it’s not good for you to sleep in the day.” 

They adored each other. When one went into 


An Artist’s Story 165 


the garden, the other would stand on the terrace, 
and, looking towards the trees, call ‘‘ Aa — oo, 
Genya!” or “ Mother, where are you?” They al- 
ways said their prayers together, and had the same 
faith; and they understood each other perfectly even 
when they did not speak. And their attitude to 
people was the same. Ekaterina Pavlovna, too, 
grew quickly used to me and fond of me, and when 
I did not come for two or three days, sent to ask if 
I were well. She, too, gazed at my sketches with 
enthusiasm, and with the same openness and readi- 
ness to chatter as Misuce, she told me what had hap- 
pened, and confided to me her domestic secrets. 

She had a perfect reverence for her elder daugh- 
ter. Lida did not care for endearments, she talked 
only of serious matters; she lived her life apart, and 
to her mother and sister was as sacred and enigmatic 
a person as the admiral, always sitting in his cabin, 
is to the sailors. 

“Our Lida is a remarkable person,” the mother 
would often say. ‘“‘Isn’t she?” 

Now, too, while it was drizzling with rain, we 
talked of Lida. 

‘‘ She is a remarkable girl,” said her mother, and 
added in an undertone, like a conspirator, looking 
about her timidly: ‘* You wouldn’t easily find an- 
other like her; only, do you know, I am beginning to 
be a little uneasy. The school, the dispensary, 
books — all that’s very good, but why go to ex- 
tremes? She is three-and-twenty, you know; it’s 


166 The Darling and Other Stories 


time for her to think seriously of herself. With 
her books and her dispensary she will find life has 
slipped by without having noticed it. . . . She must 
be married.” 

Genya, pale from reading, with her hair disar- 
ranged, raised her head and said as it were to her- 
self, looking at her mother: 

‘‘ Mother, everything is in God’s hands.” 

And again she buried herself in her book. 

Byelokurov came in his tunic and embroidered 
shirt. We played croquet and tennis, then when it 
got dark, sat a long time over supper and talked 
again about schools, and about Balagin, who had 
the whole district under his thumb. As I went away 
from the Voltchaninovs that evening, I carried away 
the impression of a long, long idle day, with a mel- 
ancholy consciousness that everything ends in this 
world, however long it may be. 

Genya saw us out to the gate, and perhaps be- 
cause she had been with me all day, from morning 
till night, I felt dull without her, and that all that 
charming family were near and dear to me, and for 
the first time that summer I had a yearning to paint. 

‘Tell me, why do you lead such a dreary, colour- 
less life?’’ I asked Byelokurov as I went home. 
‘““My life is dreary, difficult, and monotonous be- 
cause I am an artist, a strange person. From my 
earliest days I’ve been wrung by envy, self-dissatis- 
faction, distrust in my work. I’m always poor, I’m 
a wanderer, but you— you're a healthy, normal 


An Artist’s Story 167 


man, a landowner, and a gentleman. Why do you 
live in such an uninteresting way? Why do you get 
so little out of life? Why haven't you, for instance, 
fallen in love with Lida or Genya?”’ 

“You forget that I love another woman,’ an- 
swered Byelokuroy. 

He was referring to Liubov Ivanovna, the lady 
who shared the lodge with him. Every day I saw 
this lady, very plump, rotund, and dignified, not un- 
like a fat goose, walking about the garden, in the 
Russian national dress and beads, always carrying 
a parasol; and the servant was continually calling 
her in to dinner or to tea. ‘Three years before she 
had taken one of the lodges for a summer holiday, 
and had settled down at Byelokurov’s apparently 
forever. She was ten years older than he was, and 
kept a sharp hand over him, so much so that he 
had to ask her permission when he went out of the 
house. She often sobbed in a deep masculine note, 
and then I used to send word to her that if she did 
not leave off, I should give up my rooms there; and 
she left off. 

When we got home Byelokurov sat down on the 
sofa and frowned thoughtfully, and I began walk- 
ing up and down the room, conscious of a soft emo- 
tion as though I were in love. I wanted to talk 
about the Voltchaninovs. 

“Lida could only fall in love with a member of 
the Zemstvo, as devoted to schools and hospitals as 
she is,’ I said. ‘‘ Oh, for the sake of a girl like that 


168 The Darling and Other Stories 


one might not only go into the Zemstvo, but even 
wear out iron shoes, like the girl in the fairy tale. 
And Misuce? What a sweet creature she is, that 
Misuce! ”’ 

Byelokuroy, drawling out “ Er—er,” began a 
long-winded disquisition on the malady of the age 
— pessimism. He talked confidently, in a tone that 
suggested that I was opposing him. Hundreds of 
miles of desolate, monotonous, burnt-up steppe can- 
not induce such deep depression as one man when 
he sits and talks, and one does not know when he 
will go. , 

‘It’s not a question of pessimism or optimism,” I 
said irritably; “it’s simply that ninety-nine people 
out of a hundred have no sense.” 

Byelokurov took this as aimed at himself, was 
offended, and went away. 


III 


‘The prince is staying at Malozyomovo, and he 
asks to be remembered to you,” said Lida to her 
mother. She had just come in, and was taking off 
her gloves. ‘“‘ He gave me a great deal of inter- 
esting news. . . . He promised to raise the ques- 
tion of a medical relief centre at Malozyomovo 
again at the provincial assembly, but he says there 
is very little hope of it.” And turning to me, she 
said: ‘Excuse me, I always forget that this can- 
not be interesting to you.” 

I felt irritated. 


An Artist’s Story 169 


“Why not interesting to me?” I said, shrugging 
my shoulders. ‘* You do not care to know my opin- 
ion, but I assure you the question has great interest 
ror me.’ 

oe Yes? be 

“Yes. In my opinion a medical relief centre at 
Malozyomovo is quite unnecessary.” 

My irritation infected her; she looked at me, 
screwing up her eyes, and asked: 

‘““What is necessary? Landscapes?”’ 

*“* Landscapes are not, either. Nothing is.” 

She finished taking off her gloves, and opened the 
newspaper, which had just been brought from the 
post. A minute later she said quietly, evidently re- 
straining herself: 

“Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if there 
had been a medical relief centre near, she would 
have lived. And I think even landscape-painters 
ought to have some opinions on the subject.” 

‘“T have a very definite opinion on that subject, 
I assure you,” I answered; and she screened herself 
with the newspaper, as though unwilling to listen 
to me. ‘To my mind, all these schools, dispen- 
saries, libraries, medical relief centres, under present 
conditions, only serve to aggravate the bondage of 
the people. The peasants are fettered by a great 
chain, and you do not break the chain, but only add 
fresh links to it — that’s my view of it.” 

She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, 
and I went on trying to formulate my leading idea. 


170 The Darling and Other Stories 


“What matters is not that Anna died in child- 
birth, but that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelageas, 
toil from early morning till dark, fall ill from work- 
ing beyond their strength, all their lives tremble for 
their sick and hungry children, all their lives are 
being doctored, and in dread of death and disease, 
fade and grow old early, and die in filth and stench. 
Their children begin the same story over again as 
soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for 
hundreds of years and milliards of men live worse 
than beasts —in continual terror, for a mere crust 
of bread. The whole horror of their position lies 
in their never having time to think of their souls, 
of their image and semblance. Cold, hunger, ant- 
mal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of 
snow, block for them every way to spiritual activ- 
ity —that is, to what distinguishes man from the 
brutes and what is the only thing which makes life 
worth living. You go to their help with hospitals 
and schools, but you don’t free them from their fet- 
ters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in 
closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you 
increase the number of their wants, to say nothing of 
the fact that they’ve got to pay the Zemstvo for 
blisters and books, and so toil harder than ever.” 

“Tam not going to argue with you,” said Lida, 
putting down the paper. “I’ve heard all that be- 
fore. I will only say one thing: one cannot sit with 
one’s hands in one’s lap. It’s true that we are not 
saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many 


An Artist’s Story 177i 


mistakes; but we do what we can, and we are right. 
The highest and holiest task for a civilised being 
is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve them 
as best we can. You don’t like it, but one can’t 
please every one.” 

“ That’s true, Lida,” said her mother —“ that’s 
prae.’ 

In Lida’s presence she was always a little timid, 
and looked at her nervously as she talked, afraid 
of saying something superfluous or inopportune. 
And she never contradicted her, but always assented: 
‘“ That’s true, Lida — that’s true.” 

“Teaching the peasants to read and write, books 
of wretched precepts and rhymes, and medical re- 
lief centres, cannot diminish either ignorance or the 
death-rate, just as the light from your windows can- 
not light up this huge garden,” said I. ‘ You give 
nothing. By meddling in these people’s lives you 
only create new wants in them, and new demands 
on their labour.” 

‘“ Ach! Good heavens! But one must do some- 
thing!” said Lida with vexation, and from her tone 
one could see that she thought my arguments worth- 
less and despised them. 

“The people must be freed from hard physical 
labour,” said I. ‘‘ We must lighten their yoke, let 
them have time to breathe, that they may not spend 
all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and in 
the fields, but may also have time to think of their 
souls, of God —may have time to develop their 


172 The Darling and Other Stories 


spiritual capacities. ‘The highest vocation of man 
is spiritual activity — the perpetual search for truth 
and the meaning of life. Make coarse animal la- 
bour unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves 
free, and then you will see what a mockery these dis- 
pensaries and books are. Once a man recognises his 
true vocation, he can only be satisfied by religion, sci- 
ence, and art, and not by these trifles.”’ 

‘Free them from labour?” laughed Lida. ‘‘ But 
is that possible?” 

“Yes. [ake upon yourself a share of their la- 
bour. If all of us, townspeople and country people, 
all without exception, would agree to divide between 
us the labour which mankind spends on the satis- 
faction of their physical needs, each of us would 
perhaps need to work only for two or three hours 
a day. Imagine that we all, rich and poor, work 
only for three hours a day, and the rest of our time 
is free. Imagine further that in order to depend 
even less upon our bodies and to labour less, we 
invent machines to replace our work, we try to cut 
down our needs to the minimum. We would 
harden ourselves and our children that they should 
not be afraid of hunger and cold, and that we 
shouldn’t be continually trembling for their health 
like Anna, Mavra, and Pelagea. Imagine that we 
don’t doctor ourselves, don’t keep dispensaries, to- 
bacco factories, distilleries — what a lot of free time 
would be left us after all! All of us together 
would devote our leisure to science and art. Just 


An Artist’s Story 173 


as the peasants sometimes work, the whole com- 
munity together mending the roads, so all of us, as 
a community, would search for truth and the mean- 
ing of life, and I am convinced that the truth would 
be discovered very quickly; man would escape from 
this continual, agonising, oppressive dread of death, 
and even from death itself.” 

“You contradict yourself, though,” satd Lida. 
“You talk about science, and are yourself opposed 
to elementary education.” 

“Elementary education when a man has noth- 
ing to read but the signs on public houses and 
sometimes books which he cannot understand — 
such education has existed among us since the times 
of Rurik; Gogol’s Petrushka has been reading for 
ever so long, yet as the village was in the days of 
Rurik so it has remained. What is needed is not 
elementary education, but freedom for a wide de- 
velopment of spiritual capacities. What are wanted 
are not schools, but universities.” 

“You are opposed to medicine, too.” 

“Yes. It would be necessary only for the study 
of diseases as natural phenomena, and not for the 
cure of them. If one must cure, it should not be 
diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the prin- 
cipal cause — physical labour, and then there will 
be no disease. I don’t believe in a science that cures 
disease,” I went on excitedly. ‘‘ When science and 
art are real, they aim not at temporary private ends, 
but at eternal and universal — they seek for truth 


174 The Darling and Other Stories 


and the meaning of life, they seek for God, for the 
soul, and when they are tied down to the needs and 
evils of the day, to dispensaries and libraries, they 
only complicate and hamper life. We have plenty 
of doctors, chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can 
read and write, but we are quite without biologists, 
mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The whole of 
our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, 
is spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs. 
Scientific men, writers, artists, are hard at work; 
thanks to them, the conveniences of life are multi- 
plied from day to day. Our physical demands in- 
crease, yet truth is still a long way off, and man 
still remains the most rapacious and dirty animal; 
everything is tending to the degeneration of the ma- 
jority of mankind, and the loss forever of all fit- 
ness for life. In such conditions an artist’s work 
has no meaning, and the more talented he is, the 
stranger and the more unintelligible is his position, 
as when one looks into it, it is evident that he is 
working for the amusement of a rapacious and un- 
clean animal, and is supporting the existing order. 
And I don’t care to work and I won't work... . 
Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition! ” 

‘“Misuce, go out of the room!” said Lida to her 
sister, apparently thinking my words pernicious to 
the young girl. 

Genya looked mournfully at her mother and sis- 
ter, and went out of the room. 

“These are the charming things people say when 


An Artist’s. Story 175 


they want to justify their indifference,” said Lida. 
“It is easier to disapprove of schools and hospitals, 
than to teach or heal.” 

“ That’s true, Lida —that’s true,’ the mother 
assented. 

“You threaten to give up working,” said Lida. 
‘You evidently set a high value on your work. Let 
us give up arguing; we shall never agree, since I 
put the most imperfect dispensary or library of 
which you have just spoken so contemptuously on 
a higher level than any landscape.’ And turning 
at once to her mother, she began speaking in quite 
a different tone: ‘The prince is very much 
changed, and much thinner than when he was with 
us last. He is being sent to Vichy.” 

She told her mother about the prince in order 
to avoid talking to me. Her face glowed, and to 
hide her feeling she bent low over the table as though 
she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading 
the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to 
her. I said good-bye and went home. 


ry 


It was quite still out of doors; the village on the 
further side of the pond was already asleep; there 
was not a light to be seen, and only the stars were 
faintly reflected in the pond. At the gate with the 
lions on it Genya was standing motionless, waiting 
to escort me. 

“Every one is asleep in the village,” I said to her, 


176 The Darling and Other Stories 


trying to make out her face in the darkness, and 
I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed uponme. ‘ The 
publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we, 
well-bred people, argue and irritate each other.” 

It was a melancholy August night — melancholy 
because there was already a feeling of autumn; the 
moon was rising behind a purple cloud, and it shed 
a faint light upon the road and on the dark fields of 
winter corn by the sides. From time to time a star 
fell. Genya walked beside me along the road, and 
tried not to look at the sky, that she might not see 
the falling stars, which for some reason frightened 
her. 

‘“T believe you are right,” she said, shivering with 
the damp night air. ‘‘ If people, all together, could 
devote themselves to spiritual ends, they would soon 
know everything.” 

‘“Of course. We are higher beings, and if we 
were really to recognise the whole force of human 
genius and lived only for higher ends, we should 
in the end become like gods. But that will never 
be — mankind will degenerate till no traces of genius 
remain.” 

When the gates were out of sight, Genya stopped 
and shook hands with me. 

“ Good-night,” she said, shivering; she had noth- 
ing but her blouse over her shoulders and was shrink- 
ing with cold. ‘‘ Come to-morrow.” 

I felt wretched at the thought of being left alone, 
irritated and dissatisfied with myself and other peo- 


An Artist’s Story 177 


ple; and I, too, tried not to look at the falling stars. 

“Stay another minute,” I said to her, ‘I en- 
treat you.” 

I loved Genya. I must have loved her because 
she met me when I came and saw me off when I 
went away; because she looked at me tenderly and 
enthusiastically. ow touchingly beautiful were her 
pale face, slender neck, slender arms, her weakness, 
her idleness, her reading. And intelligence? I 
suspected in her intelligence above the average. I 
was fascinated by the breadth of her views, perhaps 
because they were different from those of the stern, 
handsome Lida, who disliked me. Genya liked me, 
_ because I was an artist. I had conquered her heart 
by my talent, and had a passionate desire to paint 
for her sake alone; and I dreamed of her as of my 
little queen who with me would possess those trees, 
those fields, the mists, the dawn, the exquisite and 
beautiful scenery in the midst of which I had felt 
myself hopelessly solitary and useless. 

“Stay another minute,’ I begged her. “I -be- 
seech you.” 

I took off my overcoat and put it over her chilly 
shoulders; afraid of looking ugly and absurd in a 
man’s overcoat, she laughed, threw it off, and at 
that instant I put my arms round her and covered 
her face, shoulders, and hands with kisses. 

“Till to-morrow,” she whispered, and softly, as 
though afraid of breaking upon the silence of the 
night, she embraced me. “ We have no secrets 


178 The Darling and Other Stories 


from one another. I must tell my mother and my 
sister at once. . . . It’s so dreadful! Mother is 
all right; mother likes you — but Lida! ”’ 

She ran to the gates. 

“Good-bye!” she called. 

And then for two minutes I heard her running. 
I did not want to go home, and I had nothing to 
go for. I stood still for a little time hesitating, 
and made my way slowly back, to look once more 
at the house in which she lived, the sweet, simple 
old house, which seemed to be watching me from 
the windows of its upper storey, and understanding 
all about it. I walked by the terrace, sat on the 
seat by the tennis ground, in the dark under the 
old elm-tree, and looked from there at the house. 
In the windows of the top storey where Misuce slept 
there appeared a bright light, which changed to a 
soft green —they had covered the lamp with the 
shade. Shadows began to move. ... 1 was full 
of tenderness, peace, and satisfaction with myself 
— satisfaction at having been able to be carried away 
by my feelings and having fallen in love, and at the 
same time I felt uncomfortable at the thought that 
only a few steps away from me, in one of the rooms 
of that house there was Lida, who disliked and per- 
haps hated me. I went on sitting there wondering 
whether Genya would come out; I listened and fan- 
cied I heard voices talking upstairs. 

About an hour passed. The green light went 
out, and the shadows were no longer visible. The 


An Artist’s Story 179 


moon was standing high above the house, and light- 
ing up the sleeping garden and the paths; the dah- 
lias and the roses in front of the house could be seen 
distinctly, and looked all the same colour. It be- 
gan to grow very cold. I went out of the garden, 
picked up my coat on the road, and slowly sauntered 
home. 

When next day after dinner I went to the Vol- 
tchaninovs, the glass door into the garden was wide 
open. I sat down on the terrace, expecting Genya 
every minute, to appear from behind the flower-beds 
on the lawn, or from one of the avenues, or that I 
should hear her voice from the house. Then I[ 
walked into the drawing-room, the dining-room. 
There was not a soul to be seen. From the dining- 
room I walked along the long corridor to the hall 
and back. In this corridor there were several doors, 
and through one of them I heard the voice of Lida: 

Agog, «... Sent... a crow, ’ -shée-said in a 
loud, emphatic voice, probably dictating —‘ ‘God 
pene a crow a piece of cheese... .. » A-crow.. =. 
apiece of cheese.’ . . . Who's therer”’ she called 
suddenly, hearing my steps. 

(a5 It’s L Rss 

‘Ah! Excuse me, I cannot come out to you this 
minute; I’m giving Dasha her lesson.” 

“Ts Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden? ” 

‘““No, she went away with my sister this morn- 
ing to our aunt in the province of Penza. And 
in the winter they will probably go abroad,” she 


180 The Darling and Other Stories 


added aiter a pause: “ “God sent ..: the crow 
, a piece... ~~ 5 Of cheese.’ 43. . ave yous 
cen ite 

I went into the hall, and stared vacantly at the 
pond and the village, and the sound reached me of 
“A piece of -cheesé; . « . God. sént: the crow @ 
piece of cheese.” 

And I went back by the way I had come here for 
the first time — first from the yard into the garden 
past the house, then into the avenue of lime-trees. 
. . . At this point I was overtaken by a small boy 
who gave me a note: 

“I told my sister everything and she insists on 
my parting from you,” I read. ‘“ I could not wound 
her by disobeying. God will give you happiness. 
Forgive me. If only you knew how bitterly my 
mother and I are crying!” 

Then there was the dark fir avenue, the broken- 
down fence. . . . On the field where then the rye 
was in flower and the corncrakes were calling, now 
there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope 
there were bright green patches of winter corn. A 
sober workaday feeling came over me and I felt 
ashamed of all I had said at the Voltchaninovs’, and 
felt bored with life as I had been before. When I 
got home, I packed and set off that evening for Pet- 
ersburg. 


I never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Not long 
ago, on my way to the Crimea, I met Byelokurov 


An Artist’s Story 181 


in the train. As before, he was wearing a jerkin 
and an embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he 
was, he replied that, God be praised, he was well. 
We began talking. He had sold his old estate and 
bought another smaller one, in the name of Liubov 
Ivanovna. He could tell me little about the Vol- 
tchaninovs. Lida, he said, was still living in Shel- 
kovka and teaching in the school; she had by de- 
grees succeeded in gathering round her a circle of 
people sympathetic to her who made a strong party, 
and at the last election had turned out Balagin, who 
had till then had the whole district under his thumb. 
About Genya he only told me that she did not live 
at home, and that he did not know where she was. 

I am beginning to forget the old house, and only 
sometimes when I am painting or reading I suddenly, 
apropos of nothing, remember the green light in 
the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked 
home through the fields in the night, with my heart 
full of love, rubbing my hands inthe cold. And still 
more rarely, at moments when I am sad and de- 
pressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and 
little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of 
me, too —that she is waiting for me, and that we 
shal nieet. .. . 

Misuce, where are you? 





n 
. 
Ms 
a 
i 
an 
b 








THREE YEARS 


I 


Ir was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam 
here and there in the houses, and a pale moon was 
rising behind the barracks at the end of the street. 
Laptev was sitting on a bench by the gate waiting 
for the end of the evening service at the Church of 
St. Peter and St. Paul. He was reckoning that 
Yulia Sergeyevna would pass by on her way from 
the service, and then he would speak to her, and 
perhaps spend the whole evening with her. 

He had been sitting there for an hour and a half 
already, and all that time his imagination had been 
busy picturing his Moscow rooms, his Moscow 
friends, his man Pyotr, and his writing-table. He 
gazed half wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, 
and it seemed strange to him that he was living 
now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki, but in 
a provincial town in a house by which a great herd 
of cattle was driven every morning and evening, 
accompanied by terrible clouds of dust and the blow- 
ing of a horn. He thought of long conversations 
in which he had taken part quite lately in Moscow 
—conversations in which it had been maintained 


that one could live without love, that passionate love 
185 


186 The Darling and Other Stories 


was an obsession, that finally there is no such love, 
but only a physical attraction between the sexes — 
and so on, in the same style; he remembered them 
and thought mournfully that if he were asked now 
what love was, he could not have found an answer. 

The service was over, the people began to appear. 
Laptev strained his eyes gazing at the dark figures. 
The bishop had been driven by in his carriage, the 
bells had stopped ringing, and the red and green 
lights in the belfry were one after another ex- 
tinguished —there had been an illumination, as it 
was dedication day— but the people were still 
coming out, lingering, talking, and standing un- 
der the windows. But at last Laptev heard a fa- 
miliar voice, his heart began beating violently, and 
he was overcome with despair on seeing that Yulia 
Sergeyevna was not alone, but walking with two 
ladies. 

“It’s awful, awful!” he whispered, feeling jeal- 
ous. “ It’s awful!” 

At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say 
good-bye to the ladies, and while doing so glanced 
at Laptev. 

‘“T was coming to see you,” he said. ‘I’m com- 
ing for a chat with your father. Is he at home?” 

* Most likely,” she answered. “It’s early for 
him to have gone to the club.” 

There were gardens all along the lane, and a 
row of lime-trees growing by the fence cast a broad 
patch of shadow in the moonlight, so that the gate 


Three: Years 187 


and the fences were completely plunged in dark- 
ness on one side, from which came the sounds of 
women whispering, smothered laughter, and some- 
one playing softly on a balalaika. There was a fra- 
grance of lime-flowers and of hay. This fragrance 
and the murmur of the unseen whispers worked 
upon Laptev. He was all at once overwhelmed with 
a passionate longing to throw his arms round his 
companion, to shower kisses on her face, her hands, 
her shoulders, to burst into sobs, to fall at her feet 
and to tell her how long he had been waiting for 
her. A faint scarcely perceptible scent of incense 
hung about her; and that scent reminded him of the 
time when he, too, believed in God and used to go 
to evening service, and when he used to dream so 
much of pure romantic love. And it seemed to 
him that, because this girl did not love him, all pos- 
sibility of the happiness he had dreamed of then 
was lost to him forever. 

She began speaking sympathetically of the illness 
of his sister, Nina Fyodorovna. Two months be- 
fore his sister had undergone an operation for can- 
cer, and now every one was expecting a return of the 
disease. 

““T went to see her this morning,” said Yulia 
Sergeyevna, ‘‘and it seemed to me that during the 
last week she has, not exactly grown thin, but has, 
as it were, faded.” 

es, yes, Lapter agreed: “There's no’ re- 
turn of the symptoms, but every day I notice she 


188 The Darling and Other Stories 


grows weaker and weaker, and is wasting before my 
eyes. I don’t understand what's the matter with 
her: 

‘“Oh dear! And how strong she used to be, 
plump and rosy!” said Yulia Sergeyevna after a 
moment’s silence. ‘‘ Every one here used to call her 
the Moscow lady. How she used to laugh! On 
holidays she used to dress up like a peasant girl, 
and it suited her so well.” 

Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home; he was 
a stout, red-faced man, wearing a long coat that 
reached below his knees, and looking as though he 
had short legs. He was pacing up and down his 
study, with his hands in his pockets, and humming 
to himself in an undertone, “ Ru-ru-ru-ru.” His 
grey whiskers looked unkempt, and his hair was un- 
brushed, as though he had just got out of bed. And 
his study with pillows on the sofa, with stacks of 
papers in the corners, and with a dirty invalid 
poodle lying under the table, produced the same im- 
pression of unkemptness and untidiness as himself. 

‘“M. Laptev wants to see you,” his daughter said 
to him, going into his study. 

“ Ru-ru-ru-ru,’”> he hummed louder than ever, and 
turning into the drawing-room, gave his hand to 
Laptev, and asked: ‘‘ What good news have you 
£6: tell mer.” 

It was dark in the drawing-room. Laptey, still 
standing with his hat in his hand, began apologising 
for disturbing him; he asked what was to be done 


Three Years 189 


to make his sister sleep at night, and why she was 
growing so thin; and ne was embarrassed by the 
thought that he had asked those very questions at 
his visit that morning. 

“Tell me,” he said, “ wouldn’t it be as well to 
send for some specialist on internal diseases from 
Moscow? What do you think of it?” 

The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and 
made a vague gesture with his hands. 

It was evident that he was offended. He was 
a very huffy man, prone to take offence, and always 
ready to suspect that people did not believe in him, 
that he was not recognised or properly respected, 
that his patients exploited him, and that his col- 
leagues showed him ill-will. He was always Jjeer- 
ing at himself, saying that fools like him were only 
made for the public to ride rough-shod over them. 

Yulia Sergeyevna lighted the lamp. She was 
tired out with the service, and that was evident 
from her pale, exhausted face, and her weary step. 
She wanted to rest. She sat down on the sofa, put 
her hands on her lap, and sank into thought. Lap- 
tev knew that he was ugly, and now he felt as 
though he were conscious of his ugliness all over 
his body. He was short, thin, with ruddy cheeks, 
and his hair had grown so thin that his head felt 
cold. In his expression there was none of that re- 
fined simplicity which makes even rough, ugly faces 
attractive; in the society of women, he was awk- 
ward, over-talkative, affected. And now he almost 


190 The Darling and Other Stories 


despised himself for it. He must talk that Yulia 
Sergeyevna inight not be bored in his company. But 
what about? About his sister’s illness again? 

And he began to talk about medicine, saying what 
is usually said. He approved of hygiene, and said 
that he had long ago wanted to found a night-refuge 
in Moscow — in fact, he had already calculated the 
cost of it. According to his plan the workmen who 
came in the evening to the night-refuge were to re- 
ceive a supper of hot cabbage soup with bread, a 
warm, dry bed with a rug, and a place for drying 
their clothes and their boots. 

Yulia Sergeyevna was usually silent in his pres- 
ence, and in a strange way, perhaps by the instinct 
of a lover, he divined her thoughts and intentions. 
And now, from the fact that after the evening serv- 
ice she had not gone to her room to change her 
dress and drink tea, he deduced that she was going 
to pay some visit elsewhere. 

‘But I’m in no hurry with the night-refuge,” he 
went on, speaking with vexation and irritability, and 
addressing the doctor, who looked at him, as it 
were, blankly and in perplexity, evidently unable to 
understand what induced him to raise the question 
of medicine and hygiene. ‘‘ And most likely it will 
be a long time, too, before I make use of our esti- 
mate. I fear our night-shelter will fall into the 
hands of our pious humbugs and philanthropic la- 
dies, who always ruin any undertaking.” 


Tree: Years I9I 


Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand 
to Laptev. 

‘“ Excuse me,” she said, “‘it’s time for me to go. 
Please give my love to your sister.” 

‘* Ru-ru-ru-ru,” hummed the doctor. ‘“ Ru-ru- 
ru-ru.” 

Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and after staying a 
little longer, Laptev said good-bye to the doctor 
and went home. When a man is dissatisfied and 
feels unhappy, how trivial seem to him the shapes 
of the lime-trees, the shadows, the clouds, all the 
beauties of nature, so complacent, so indifferent! 
By now the moon was high up in the sky, and the 
clouds were scudding quickly below. ‘“‘ But how 
naive and provincial the moon is, how threadbare 
and paltry the clouds!’’ thought Laptev. He felt 
ashamed cf the way he had talked just now about 
medicine, and the night-refuge. He felt with hor- 
ror that next day he would not have will enough to 
resist trying to see her and talk to her again, and 
would again be convinced that he was nothing to 
her. And the day after —§it would be the same. 
With what object? And how and when would it 
all end? 

At home he went in to see his sister. Nina 
Fyodorovna still looked strong and gave the im- 
pression of being a well-built, vigorous woman, but 
her striking pallor made her look like a corpse, es- 
pecially when, as now, she was lying on her back 


192 The Darling and Other Stories 


with her eyes closed; her eldest daughter Sasha, a 
girl of ten years old, was sitting beside her reading 
aloud from her reading-book. 

‘“ Alyosha has come,” the invalid said softly to 
herself. 

There had long been established between Sasha 
and her uncle a tacit compact, to take turns in sit- 
ting with the patient. On this occasion Sasha closed 
her reading-book, and without uttering a word, went 
softly out of the room. Laptev took an historical 
novel from the chest of drawers, and looking for 
the right page, sat down and began reading it aloud. 

Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow of a mer- 
chant family. She and her two brothers had spent 
their childhood and early youth, living at home in 
Pyatnitsky Street. Their childhood was long and 
wearisome; her father treated her sternly, and had 
even on two or three occasions flogged her, and her 
mother had had a long illness and died. ‘The serv- 
ants were coarse, dirty, and hypocritical; the house 
was frequented by priests and monks, also hypo- 
critical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered 
her father, whom they did not like. The boys had 
the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was 
left practically uneducated. All her life she wrote 
an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but his- 
torical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was 
twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she 
made the acquaintance of her present husband, a 
landowner called Panauroy, had fallen in love with 


‘Ehree Years 193 


him, and married him secretly against her father’s 
will. Panaurov, a handsome, rather impudent fel- 
low, who whistled and lighted his cigarette from 
the holy lamp, struck the father as an absolutely 
worthless person. And when the son-in-law began 
in his letters demanding a dowry, the old man wrote 
to his daughter that he would send her furs, silver, 
and various articles that had been left at her moth- 
er’s death, as well as thirty thousand roubles, but 
without his paternal blessing. Later he sent an- 
other twenty thousand. This money, as well as 
the dowry, was spent; the estate had been sold and 
Panaurov moved with his family to the town and 
got a job in a provincial government office. In the 
town he formed another tie, and had a second fam- 
ily, and this was the subject of much talk, as his 
illicit family was not a secret. 

Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And 
now, listening to the historical novel, she was think- 
ing how much she had gone through in her life, 
how much she had suffered, and that if any one were 
to describe her life it would make a very pathetic 
story. As the tumour was in her breast, she was 
persuaded that love and her domestic grief were the 
cause of her illness, and that jealousy and tears had 
brought her to her hopeless state. 

At last Alexey Fyodorovitch closed the book and 
sald: 

“ That’s the end, and thank God for it. To-mor- 


row we'll begin a new one.” 


194 The Darling and Other Stories 


Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been 
given to laughter, but of late Laptev had begun to 
notice that at moments her mind seemed weakened 
by illness, and she would laugh at the smallest trifle, 
and even without any cause at all. 

‘Yulia came before dinner while you were out,” 
she said. ‘‘So far as I can see, she hasn’t much 
faith in her papa. ‘Let papa go on treating you,’ 
she said, ‘but write in secret to the holy elder to 
pray for you, too.’ There is a holy man some- 
where here. Yulia forgot her parasol here; you 
must take it to her to-morrow,” she went on after 
a brief pause. ‘‘ No, when the end comes, neither 
doctors nor holy men are any help.” 

“Nina, why can’t you sleep at night?” Laptev 
asked, to change the subject. 

‘“Oh, well, I don’t go to sleep —that’s all. I 
lie and think.” 

‘What do you think about, dear?” 

‘** About the children, about you... about my 
life. I’ve gone through a great deal, Alyosha, you 
know. When one begins to remember and remem- 
per, ....« iy God!” She: Jagehed, °* aig 
joke to have borne five children as I have, to have 
buried three. . . . Sometimes I was expecting to 
be confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be 
sitting at that very time with another woman. 
There would be no one to send for the doctor or 
the midwife. I would go into the passage or the 
kitchen for the servant, and there Jews, tradesmen, 


Three Years 195; 


moneylenders, would be waiting for him to come 
home. My head used to go round. ... He did 
not love me, though he never said so openly. Now 
I’ve grown calmer — it doesn’t weigh on my heart; 
but in old days, when I was younger, it hurt me — 
ach! how it hurt me, darling! Once — while we 
were still in the country — I found him in the gar- 
Gen with a. lady, and I walked away... . I 
walked on aimlessly, and I don’t know how, but I 
found myself in the church porch. I fell on my 
knees: ‘Queen of Heaven!’ I said. And it was 
night, the moon was shining. . . .” 

She was exhausted, she becan gasping for breath. 
Then, after resting a little, she took her brother’s 
hand and went on in a weak, toneless voice: 

“How kind you are, Aloysha! ... And how 
clever! . . . What a good man you’ve grown up 
0 

At midnight Laptev said good-night to her, and 
as he went away he took with him the parasol that 
Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In spite of the 
late hour, the servants, male and female, were drink- 
ing tea in the dining-room. How disorderly! The 
children were not in bed, but were there in the din- 
ing-room, too. ‘They were all talking softly in un- 
dertones, and had not noticed that the lamp was 
smoking and would soon go out. All these peo- 
ple, big and little, were disturbed by a whole suc- 
cession of bad omens and were in an oppressed 
mood. The glass in the hall had been broken, the 


196 The Darling and Other Stories 


samovar had been buzzing every day, and, as though 
on purpose, was even buzzing now. ‘They were de- 
scribing how a mouse had jumped out of Nina 
Fyodorovna’s boot when she was dressing. And 
the children were quite aware of the terrible sig- 
nificance of these omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a 
thin little brunette, was sitting motionless at the ta- 
ble, and her face looked scared and woebegone, 
while the younger, Lida, a chubby fair child of seven, 
stood beside her sister looking from under her brows 
at the light. 

Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the 
lower storey, where under the low ceilings it was 
always close and smelt of geraniums. In his sit- 
ting-room, Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna’s husband, 
was sitting reading the newspaper. lLaptev nodded 
to him and sat down opposite. Both sat still and 
said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings 
like this without speaking, and neither of them was 
in the least put out by this silence. 

The little girls came down from upstairs to say 
good-night. Deliberately and in silence, Panaurov 
made the sign of the cross over them several times, 
and gave them his hand to kiss. They dropped 
curtsies, and then went up to Laptev, who had to 
make the sign of the cross and give them his hand 
to kiss also. This ceremony with the hand-kissing 
and curtsying was repeated every evening. 

When the children had gone out Panaurov laid 
aside the newspaper and said: 


Three Years 197 


“Tt’s not very lively in our God-fearing town! 
I must confess, my dear fellow,” he added with a 
sigh, “ [’'m very glad that at last you’ve found some 
distraction.” 

‘What do you mean?” asked Laptev. 

““T saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin’s just 
now. I expect you don’t go there for the sake of 
the papa.” 

‘* Of course not,” said Laptev, and he blushed. 

“Well, of course not. And by the way, you 
wouldn’t find such another old brute as that papa 
if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You can’t 
imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast he is! 
You cultured people in the capitals are still inter- 
ested in the provinces only on the lyrical side, only 
from the paysage and Poor Anton point of view, 
but I can assure you, my boy, there’s nothing 
logical about it; there’s nothing but barbarism, 
meanness, and nastiness —that’s all. Take the lo- 
cal devotees of science — the local intellectuals, so 
to speak. Can you imagine there are here in this 
town twenty-eight doctors? They’ve all made their 
fortunes, and they are living in houses of their own, 
and meanwhile the population is in just as helpless 
a condition as ever. Here, Nina had to have an 
operation, quite an ordinary one really, yet we were 
obliged to get a surgeon from Moscow; not one doc- 
tor here would undertake it. It’s beyond all con- 
ception. They know nothing, they understand noth- 
ing. They take no interest in anything. Ask them, 


198 ‘The Darling and Other Stories 


for instance, what cancer is — what it is, what it 
comes from.” 

And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. 
He was a specialist on all scientific subjects, and ex- 
plained from a scientific point of view everything 
that was discussed. But he explained it all in his 
own way. He had a theory of his own about the 
circulation of the blood, about chemistry, about as- 
tronomy. He talked slowly, softly, convincingly. 

‘ Tt’s beyond all conception,” he pronounced in an 
imploring voice, screwing up his eyes, sighing lan- 
guidly, and smiling as graciously as a king, and it 
was evident that he was very well satisfied with 
himself, and never gave a thought to the fact that 
he was fifty. 

‘Tam rather hungry,’ 
like something savoury.” 

“Well, that can easily be managed.” 

Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in- 
law were sitting upstairs in the dining-room having 
supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka, and then 
began drinking wine. Panauroy drank nothing. 
He never drank, and never gambled, yet in spite 
of that he had squandered all his own and his wife’s 
property, and had accumulated debts. “To squander 
so much in such a short time, one must have, not 
passions, but a special talent. Panaurov liked dainty 
fare, liked a handsome dinner service, liked music 
after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen, to whom he 
would carelessly fling tips of ten, even twenty-five 


’ said Laptev. “I should 


Three Years 199 


roubles. He always took part in all lotteries and 
subscriptions, sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaint- 
ance on their birthdays, bought cups, stands for 
glasses, studs, ties, walking-sticks, scents, cigarette- 
holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-a- 
brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bed- 
stead made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. 
His dressing-gown was a genuine Bokhara, and ev- 
erything was to correspond; and on all this there 
went every day, as he himself expressed, ‘“‘ a deluge ”’ 
of money. 

At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head. 

‘““'Yes, everything on this earth has an end,” he 
said softly, screwing up his dark eyes. ‘‘ You will 
fall in love and suffer. You will fall out of love; 
you'll be deceived, for there is no woman who will 
not deceive; you will suffer, will be brought to de- 
spair, and will be faithless too. But the time will 
come when all this will be a memory, and when 
you will reason about it coldly and look upon it as 
utterly trivial... .” 

Laptev, tired, a little drunk, looked at his hand- 
some head, his clipped black beard, and seemed to 
understand why women so loved this pampered, con- 
ceited, and physically handsome creature. 

After supper Panaurov did not stay in the house, 
but went off to his other lodgings. Laptev went 
out to see him on his way. Panaurov was the only 
man in the town who wore a top-hat, and his ele- 
gant, dandified figure, his top-hat and tan gloves, 


200 The Darling and Other Stories 


beside the grey fences, the pitiful little houses, with 
their three windows and the thickets of nettles, al- 
ways made a strange and mournful impression. 

After saying good-bye to him Laptev returned 
home without hurrying. The moon was shining 
brightly; one could distinguish every straw on the 
ground, and Laptev felt as though the moonlight 
were caressing his bare head, as though some one 
were passing a feather over his hair. 

“T love!” he pronounced aloud, and he had a 
sudden longing to run to overtake Panaurovy, to em- 
brace him, to forgive him, to make him a present of 
a lot of money, and then to run off into the open 
country, into a wood, to run on and on without look- 
ing back. 

At home he saw lying on the chair the parasol 
Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten; he snatched it up 
and kissed it greedily. The parasol was a silk one, 
no longer new, tied round with old elastic. The 
handle was a cheap one, of white bone. Laptev 
opened it over him, and he felt as though there were 
the fragrance of happiness about him. 

He settled himself more comfortably in his chair, 
and still keeping hold of the parasol, began writing 
to Moscow to one of his friends: 


** DEAR PRECIOUS Kostya, 
‘“‘ Here is news for you: I’m in love again! I say 
again, because six years ago I fell in love with a 


Three Years 201 


Moscow actress, though I didn’t even succeed in 
making her acquaintance, and for-the last year and 
a half I have been living with a certain person you 
know —a woman neither young nor good-looking. 
Ah, my dear boy, how unlucky I am in love. I’ve 
never had any success with women, and if I say 
again it’s simply because it’s rather sad and mortify- 
ing to acknowledge even to myself that my youth 
has passed entirely without love, and that I’m in 
love in a real sense now for the first time in my life, 
at thirty-four. Let it stand that I love again. 
“Tf only you knew what a girl she was! She 
couldn’t be called a beauty — she has a broad face, 
she is very thin, but what a wonderful expression 
of goodness she has when she smiles! When she 
speaks; her voice is as clear as a bell. She never 
carries on a conversation with me —I don’t know 
her; but when I’m beside her I feel she’s a striking, 
exceptional creature, full of intelligence and lofty 
aspirations. She is religious, and you cannot 
imagine how deeply this touches me and exalts her 
in my eyes. On that point I am ready to argue with 
you endlessly. You may be right, to your think- 
ing; but, still, I love to see her praying in church. 
She is a provincial, but she was educated in Moscow. 
She loves our Moscow; she dresses in the Moscow 
style, and I love her for that — love her, love her. 
... TI see you frowning and getting up to read 
me a long lecture on what love is, and what sort of 


202 The Darling and Other Stories 


woman one can love, and what sort one cannot, and 
so on, and so on. But, dear Kostya, before I was 
in love I, too, knew quite well what love was. 

“My sister thanks you for your message. She 
often recalls how she used to take Kostya Kotche- 
voy to the preparatory class, and never speaks of 
you except as poor Kostya, as she still thinks of you 
as the little orphan boy she remembers. And s0, 
poor orphan, I’m in love. While it’s a secret, don’t 
say anything to a ‘certain person.’ I think it will 
all come right of itself, or, as the footman says in 
Tolstoy, will ‘come round.’ ” 


When he had finished his letter Laptev went to 
bed. He was so tired that he couldn’t keep his 
eyes open, but for some reason he could not get to 
sleep; the noise in the street seemed to prevent him. 
The cattle were driven by to the blowing of a horn, 
and soon afterwards the bells began ringing for 
early mass. At one minute a cart drove by creak- 
ing; at the next, he heard the voice of some woman 
going to market. And the sparrows twittered the 
whole time. 


II 


The next morning was a cheerful one; it was a 
holiday. At ten o’clock Nina Fyodorovna, wear- 
ing a brown dress and with her hair neatly arranged, 
was led into the drawing-room, supported on each 


hree Years 203 


side. There she walked about a little and stood 
by the open window, and her smile was broad and 
naive, and, looking at her, one recalled a local ar- 
tist, a great drunkard, who wanted her to sit to 
him for a picture of the Russian carnival. And all 
of them —the children, the servants, her brother, 
Alexey Fyodorovitch, and she herself — were sud- 
denly convinced, that she was certainly going to get 
well. With shrieks of laughter the children ran 
after their uncle, chasing him and catching him, and 
filling the house with noise. 

People called to ask how she was, brought her 
holy bread, told her that in almost all the churches 
they were offering up prayers for her that day. 
She had been conspicuous for her benevolence in 
the town, and was liked. She was very ready with 
her charity, like her brother Alexey, who gave away 
his money freely, without considering whether it 
was necessary to give it or not. Nina Fyodorovna 
used to pay the school fees for poor children; used 
to give away tea, sugar, and jam to old women; 
used to provide trousseaux for poor brides; and if 
she picked up a newspaper, she always looked first 
of all to see if there were any appeals for charity 
or a paragraph about somebody’s being in a desti- 
tute condition. 

She was holding now in her hand a bundle of 
notes, by means of which various poor people, her 
protégés, had procured goods from a grocer’s shop. 


204. The Darling and Other Stories 


They had been sent her the evening before by the 
shopkeeper with a request for the payment of the 
total — eighty-two roubles. 

‘“ My goodness, what a lot they’ve had! They’ve 
no conscience! ’’ she said, deciphering with dificulty 
her ugly handwriting. ‘It’s no joke! Eighty-two 
roubles! I declare I won’t pay it.” 

“Tl pay it to-day,” said Laptev. 

“Why should you? Why should you?” cried 
Nina Fyodorovna in agitation. ‘It’s quite enough 
for me to take two hundred and fifty every month 
from you and our brother. God bless you!’ she 
added, speaking softly, so as not to be overheard 
by the servants. 

‘Well, but I spend two thousand five hundred 
a month,” he said. “I tell you again, dear: you 
have just as much right to spend it as I or Fyodor. 
Do understand that, once for all. There are three 
of us, and of every three kopecks of our father’s 
money, one belongs to you.” 

But Nina Fyodorovna did not understand, and 
her expression looked as though she were mentally 
solving some very difficult problem. And this lack 
of comprehension in pecuniary matters, always made 
Laptev feel uneasy and troubled. He suspected 
that she had private debts in addition which wor- 
ried her and of which she scrupled to tell him. 

Then came the sound of footsteps and heavy 
breathing; it was the doctor coming up the stairs, 
dishevelled and unkempt as usual. 


Three Years 205 


“Ru-ru-ru,” he was humming. ‘ Ru-ru.”’ 

To avoid meeting him, Laptev went into the din- 
ing-room, and then went downstairs to his own 
room. It was clear to him that to get on with the 
doctor and to drop in at his house without formali- 
ties was impossible; and to meet the “ old brute,” 
as Panaurov called him, was distasteful. That was 
why he so rarely saw Yulia. He reflected now that 
the father was not at home, that if he were to take 
Yulia Sergeyevna her parasol, he would be sure to 
find her at home alone, and his heart ached with joy. 
Haste,. haste ! 

He took the parasol and, violently agitated, flew 
on the wings of love. It was hot in the street. In 
the big courtyard of the doctor’s house, overgrown 
with coarse grass and nettles, some twenty urchins 
were playing ball. These were all the children of 
working-class families who tenanted the three dis- 
reputable-looking lodges, which the doctor was al- 
ways meaning to have done up, though he put it 
off from year to year. The yard resounded with 
ringing, healthy voices. At some distance on one 
side, Yulia Sergeyevna was standing at her porch, 
her hands folded, watching the game. 

“ Good-morning! ”’ Laptev called to her. 

She looked round. Usually he saw her indiffer- 
ent, cold, or tired as she had been the evening be- 
fore. Now her face looked full of life and frolic, 
like the faces of the hovs who were playing ball. 

“ Look, they never play so merrily in Moscow,” 


206 The Darling and Other Stories 


she said, going to meet him. ‘‘ There are no such 
big yards there, though; they’ve no place to run 
there. Papa has only just gone to you,” she added, 
looking round at the children. 

“I know; but I’ve not come to see him, but to 
see you,” said Laptev, admiring her youthfulness, 
which he had not noticed till then, and seemed only 
that day to have discovered in her; it seemed to 
him as though he were seeing her slender white 
neck with the gold chain for the first time. “I’ve 


come to see you...” he- repeated. “viv gieer 
has sent you your parasol; you forgot it yester- 
day.” 


She put out her hand to take the parasol, but 
he pressed it to his bosom and spoke passionately, 
without restraint, yielding again to the sweet ecstasy 
he had felt the night before, sitting under the par- 
asol. 

‘“‘T entreat you, give it me. I shall keep it in 
memory of you... of our acquaintance. It’s so 
wonderful!” 

‘Take it,” she said, and blushed; ‘‘ but there’s 
nothing wonderful about it.” 

He looked at her in ecstasy, in silence, not know- 
ing what to say. 

‘“\Vhy am I keeping you here in the heat?” she 
said after a brief pause, laughing. ‘‘ Let us go in- 
doors.” 

‘“T am not disturbing you?” 

They went into the hall. Yulia Sergeyevna ran 


Three Years 207 


upstairs, her white dress with blue flowers on it 
rustling as she went. 

“I can’t be disturbed,” she answered, stopping 
on the landing. “I never do anything. Every day 
is a holiday for me, from morning till night.” 

‘What you say is inconceivable to me,” he said, 
going up to her. “I grew up in a world in which 
every one without exception, men and women alike, 
worked hard every day.” 

“ But if one has nothing to do?” she asked. 

“One has to arrange one’s life under such con- 
ditions, that work is inevitable. There can be no 
clean and happy life without work.” 

Again he pressed the parasol to his bosom, and 
to his own surprise spoke softly, in a voice unlike 
his own: 

“Tf you would consent to be my wife I would 
give everything—I would give everything. 
There’s no price I would not pay, no sacrifice I 
would not make.” 

She started and looked at him with wonder and 
alarm. 

‘“ What are you saying!”’ she brought out, turn- 
ing pale. ‘It’s impossible, I assure you. For- 
give me.” 

Then with the same rustle of her skirts she 
went up higher, and vanished through the door- 
way. 

Laptev grasped what this meant, and his mood 
was transformed, completely, abruptly, as though 


208 The Darling and Other Stories 


a light in his soul had suddenly been extinguished. 

Filled with the shame of a man humiliated, of 
a man who is disdained, who is not liked, who is 
distasteful, perhaps disgusting, who is shunned, he 
walked out of the house. 

‘I would give everything,” he thought, mimick- 
ing himself as he went home through the heat and 
recalled the details of his declaration. ‘I would 
give everything — like a regular tradesman. As 
though she wanted your everything!” 

All he had just said seemed to him repulsively 
stupid. Why had he lied, saving that he had grown 
up in a world where every one worked, without ex- 
ception? Why had he talked to her in a lecturing 
tone about a clean and happy life? It was not 
clever, not interesting; it was false — false in the 
Moscow style. But by degrees there followed that 
mood of indifference into which criminals sink after 
a severe sentence. He began thinking that, thank 
God! everything was at an end and that the terrible 
uncertainty was over; that now there was no need 
to spend whole days in anticipation, in pining, in 
thinking always of the same thing. Now everything 
was clear; he must give up all hope of personal hap- 
piness, live without desires, without hopes, without 
dreams, or expectations, and to escape that dreary 
sadness which he was so sick of trying to soothe, 
he could busy himself with other people’s affairs, 
other pecple’s happiness, and old age would come 
on imperceptibly, and life would reach its end — 


‘Three: Years 209 


and nothing more was wanted. He did not care, he 
wished for nothing, and could reason about it coolly, 
but there was a sort of heaviness in his face es- 
pecially under his eyes, his forehead felt drawn tight 
like elastic — and tears were almost starting into his 
eyes. Feeling weak all over, he lay down on his 
bed, and in five minutes was sound asleep. 


III 


The proposal Laptev had made so suddenly threw 
Yulia Sergeyevna into despair. 

She knew Laptev very little, had made his ac- 
quaintance by chance; he was a rich man, a part- 
ner in the well-known Moscow firm of ‘‘ Fyodor 
Laptev and Sons”; always serious, apparently 
clever, and anxious about his sister’s illness. It had 
seemed to her that he tcok no notice of her what- 
ever, and she did not care about him in the least 
— and then all of a sudden that declaration on the 
stairs, that pitiful, ecstatic face. . 

The offer had overwhelmed her by its suddenness 
and by the fact that the word wife had been uttered, 
and by the necessity of rejecting it. She could not 
remember what she had said to Laptev, but she 
still felt traces of the sudden, unpleasant feeling with 
which she had rejected him. He did not attract 
her; he looked like a shopman; he was not inter- 
esting; she could not have answered him except with 
a refusal, and yet she felt uncomfortable, as though 
she had done wrong. 


210 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘My God! without waiting to get into the room, 
on the stairs,” she said to herself in despair, ad- 
dressing the ikon which hung over her pillow; 
‘“and no courting beforehand, but so strangely, so 
OUR: < eek" 

In her solitude her agitation grew more intense 
every hour, and it was beyond her strength to mas- 
ter this oppressive feeling alone. She needed some 
one to listen to her story and to tell her that she 
had done right. But she had no one to talk to. 
She had lost her mother long before; she thought 
her father a queer man, and could not talk to him 
seriously. He worried her with his whims, his ex- 
treme readiness to take offence, and his meaning- 
less gestures; and as soon as one began to talk to 
him, he promptly turned the conversation on him- 
self. And in her prayer she was not perfectly open, 
because she did not know for certain what she ought 
to pray for. 

The samovar was brought in. Yulia Sergeyevna, 
very pale and tired, looking dejected, came into the 
dining-room to make tea — it was one of her duties 
—and poured out a glass for her father. Sergey 
Borisovitch, in his long coat that reached below his 
knees, with his red face and unkempt hair, walked 
up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, 
pacing, not from corner to corner, but backwards 
and forwards at random, like a wild beast in its 
cage. He would stand still by the table, sip his 


Three Years 2II 


glass of tea with relish, and pace about again, lost 
in thought. 

‘‘Laptev made me an offer to-day,” said Yulia 
Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson. 

The doctor looked at her and did not seem to 
understand. 

““Laptev?”’ he queried. ‘‘ Panaurov’s brother- 
in-law?” 

He was fond of his daughter; it was most likely 
that she would sooner or later be married, and leave 
him, but he tried not to think about that. He was 
afraid of being alone, and for some reason fancied, 
that if he were left alone in that great house, he 
would have an apoplectic stroke, but he did not like 
to speak of this directly. 

“Well, I’m delighted to hear it,” he sata, shrug- 
ging his shoulders. ‘I congratulate you with all 
my heart. It offers you a splendid opportunity for 
leaving me, to your great satisfaction. And I quite 
understand your feelings. To live with an old 
father, an invalid, half crazy, must be very irksome 
at your age. I quite understand you. And the 
sooner I’m laid out and in the devil’s clutches, the 
better every one will be pleased. I congratulate you 
with all my heart.” 

“T refused him.” 

the doctor felt relieved, but he was unable to 
stop himself and went on: 

‘““T wonder, I’ve long wondered, why I’ve not yet 


212 The Darling and Other Stories 


been put into a madhouse — why I’m still wearing 
this coat instead of a strait-waistcoat? I still have 
faith in justice, in goodness. I am a fool, an ideal- 
ist, and nowadays that’s insanity, isn’t it? And how 
do they repay. me for my honesty? They almost 
throw stones at me and ride rough-shod over me. 
And even my nearest kith and kin do nothing but 
try to get the better of me. It’s high time the devil 
fetched an old fool like me. . . .” 

‘“There’s no talking to you like a rational be- 
mote said Yulia. 

She got up from the table impulsively, and went 
to her room in great wrath, remembering how often 
her father had been unjust to her. But a little while 
afterwards she felt sorry for her father, too, and 
when he was going to the club she went downstairs 
with him, and shut the door after him. It was a 
rough and stormy night; the door shook with the 
violence of the wind, and there were draughts in all 
directions in the passage, so that the candle was al- 
most blown out. In her own domain upstairs Yulia 
Sergeyevna went the round of all the rooms, making 
the sign of the cross over every door and window; 
the wind howled, and it sounded as though some one 
were walking on the roof. Never had it been so 
dreary, never had she felt so lonely. 

She asked herself whether she had done right 
in rejecting a man, simply because his appearance 
did not attract her. It was. true he was a man 
she did not love, and to marry him would mean re- 





Three Years 213 


nouncing forever her dreams, her conceptions of 
happiness in married life, but would she ever meet 
the man of whom she dreamed, and would he love 
her? She was twenty-one already. There were no 
eligible young men in the town. She pictured all 
the men she knew — government clerks, schoolmas- 
ters, officers, and some of them were married al- 
ready, and their domestic life was conspicuous for 
its dreariness and triviality; others were uninterest- 
ing, colourless, unintelligent, immoral. Laptev was, 
anyway, a Moscow man, had taken his degree at 
the university, spoke French. He lived in the cap- 
ital, where there were lots of clever, noble, remark- 
able people; where there was noise and bustle, splen- 
did theatres, musical evenings, first-rate dressmak- 
ers, confectioners. ... In the Bible it was writ- 
ten that a wife must love her husband, and great im- 
portance was given to love in novels, but wasn’t 
there exaggeration in it? Was it out of the ques- 
tion to enter upon married life without love? It 
was said, of course, that love soon passed away, 
and that nothing was left but habit, and that the ob- 
ject of married life was not to be found in love, 
nor in happiness, but in duties, such as the bringing 
up of one’s children, the care of one’s household, 
and so on. And perhaps what was meant in the 
Bible was love for one’s husband as one’s neigh- 
bour, respect for him, charity. 

At night Yulia Sergeyevna read the evening 
prayers attentively, then knelt down, and pressing 


214 The Darling and Other Stories 


her hands to her bosom, gazing at the flame of the 
lamp before the ikon, said with feeling: 

‘Give me understanding, Holy Mother, our De- 
fender! Give me understanding, O Lord!” 

She had in the course of her life come across eld- 
erly maiden ladies, poor and of no consequence in 
the world, who bitterly repented and openly con- 
fessed their regret that they had refused suitors in 
the past. Would not the same thing happen to her? 
Had not she better go into a convent or become a 
Sister of Mercy? 

She undressed and got into bed, crossing herself 
and crossing the air around her. Suddenly the bell 
rang sharply and plaintively in the corridor. 

‘“Oh, my God!” she said, feeling a nervous ir- 
ritation all over her at the sound. She lay still and 
kept thinking how poor this provincial life was in 
events, monotonous and yet not peaceful. One was 
constantly having to tremble, to feel apprehensive, 
angry or guilty, and in the end one’s nerves were so 
strained, that one was afraid to peep out of the bed- 
clothes. 

A little while afterwards the bell rang just as 
sharply again. ‘The servant must have been asleep 
and had not heard. Yulia Sergeyevna lighted a 
candle, and feeling vexed with the servant, began 
with a shiver to dress, and when she went out into 
the corridor, the maid was already closing the door 
downstairs. 


Three :Years 215 


“T thought it was the master, but it’s some one 
from a patient,” she said. 

Yulia Sergeyevna went back to her room. She 
took a pack of cards out of the chest of drawers, 
and decided that if after shuffling the cards well and 
cutting, the bottom card turned out to be a xed one, 
it would mean yes — that is, she would accept Lap- 
tev’s offer; and that if it was a black, it would mean 
no. The card turned out to be the ten of spades. 

That relieved her mind — she fell asleep; but in 
the morning, she was wavering again between yes 
and no, and she was dwelling on the thought that 
she could, if she chose, change her life. The 
thought harassed her, she felt exhausted and un- 
well; but yet, soon after eleven, she dressed and 
went to see Nina Fyodorovna. She wanted to see 
Laptev: perhaps now he would seem more attrac- 
tive to her; perhaps she had been wrong about him 
Mite rto. fs 

She found it hard to walk against the wind. She 
struggled along, holding her hat on with both hands, 
and could see nothing for the dust. 





IV 


Going into his sister’s room, and seeing to his 
surprise Yulia Sergeyevna, Laptev had again the 
humiliating sensation of a man who feels himself 
an object of repulsion. He concluded that if after 
what had happened yesterday she could bring her- 


216 The Darling and Other Stories 


self so easily to visit his sister and meet him, it 
must be because she was not concerned about him, 
and regarded him as a complete nonentity. But 
when he greeted her, and with a pale face and dust 
under her eyes she looked at him mournfully and re- 
morsefully, he saw that she, too, was miserable. 

She did not feel well. She only stayed ten min- 
utes, and began saying good-bye. And as she went 
out she said to Laptev: 

“Will you see me home, Alexey Fyodorovitch? ” 

They walked along the street in silence, holding 
their hats, and he, walking a little behind, tried to 
screen her from the wind. In the lane it was more 
sheltered, and they walked side by side. 

“Forgive me if I was not nice yesterday;” and 
her voice quavered as though she were going to 
cry. “I was so wretched! I did not sleep all 
night.” | 

‘T slept well all night,” said Laptev, without 
looking at her; ‘‘ but that doesn’t mean that I was 
happy. My life is broken. I’m deeply unhappy, 
and after your refusal yesterday I go about like a 
man poisoned. The most dificult thing was said 
yesterday. To-day I feel no embarrassment and 
can talk to you frankly. I love you more than my 
sister; more than my dead mother... 7.2m 
live without my sister, and without my mother, and 
I have lived without them, but life without you — 
is Meaningless to: me; 1 can't face it, . ...” 

And now too, as usual, he guessed her intention. 


P ot. Reo 4 


Three Years 217 


He realised that she wanted to go back to what had 
happened the day before, and with that object had 
asked him to accompany her, and now was taking 
him home with her. But what could she add to her 
refusal? What new idea had she in her head? 
From everything, from her glances, from her smile, 
and even from her tone, from the way she held her 
head and shoulders as she walked beside him, he 
saw that, as before, she did not love him, that he 
was a stranger to her. What more did she want 
to say? 

Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home. 

“You are very welcome. I’m always glad to 
see you, Fyodor Alexeyitch,” he said, mixing up his 
Christian name and his father’s. ‘ Delighted, de- 
lighted!” 

He had never been so polite before, and Laptev 
saw that he knew of his offer; he did not like that 
either. He was sitting now in the drawing-room, 
and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor, 
common decorations, its wretched pictures, and 
though there were arm-chairs in it, and a huge lamp 
with a shade over it, it still looked like an uninhab- 
ited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no 
one could feel at home in such a room, except a 
man like the doctor. The next room, almost twice 
as large, was called the reception-room, and in it 
there were only rows of chairs, as though for a danc- 
ing class. And while Laptev was sitting in the 
drawing-room talking to the doctor about his sis- 


218 The Darling and Other Stories 


ter, he began to be tortured by a suspicion. Had 
not Yulia Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina’s, and 
then brought him here to tell him that she would ac- 
cept him? Oh, how awful it was! But the most 
awful thing of all was that his soul was capable of 
such a suspicion. And he imagined how the father 
and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps 
the night before, in prolonged consultation, perhaps 
dispute, and at last had come to the conclusion that 
Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a rich man. 
The words that parents use in such cases kept ring- 
ing in his ears: 

“Tt is true you don’t love him, but think what 
good you could do!”’ 

The doctor was going out to see patients. Lap- 
tev would have gone with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna 
said: 

‘“T beg you to stay.” 

She was distressed and dispirited, and told her- 
self now that to refuse an honourable, good man who 
loved her, simply because he was not attractive, es- 
pecially when marrying him would make it possible 
for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless, 
monotonous, idle life in which youth was passing 
with no prospect of anything better in the future — 
to refuse him under such circumstances was mad- 
ness, caprice and folly, and that God might even pun- 
ish her for it. 

The father went out. When the sound of his 
steps had died away, she suddenly stood up before 


Three Years 219 


Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly white 
as she did so: 

“T thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey 
Fyodorovitch. . . . I accept your offer.” 

He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed 
him awkwardly on the head with cold lips. 

He felt that in this love scene the chief thing — 
her love — was lacking, and that there was a great 
deal that was not wanted; and he longed to cry 
out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once. 
But she was close to him, and she seemed to him so 
lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by passion. 
He reflected that it was too late for deliberation 
now; he embraced her passionately, and muttered 
some words, calling her thou; he kissed her on the 
neck, and then on the cheek, on the head... . 

She walked away to the window, dismayed by 
these demonstrations, and both of them were al- 
ready regretting what they had said and both were 
asking themselves in confusion: 

“Why has this happened?” 

“Tf only you knew how miserable I am!” she 
said, wringing her hands. 

“What is it?’’ he said, going up to her, wringing 
his hands too. ‘‘ My dear, for God’s sake, tell me 
— what is it? Only tell the truth, I entreat you — 
nothing but the truth!” 

“Don’t pay any attention to it,” she said, and 
forced herself to smile. “I promise you I'll be a 
faithful, devoted wife. . . . Come this evening.” 


220 The Darling and Other Stories 


Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading 


aloud an historical novel, he recalled it all and felt — 


wounded that his splendid, pure, rich feeling was 
met with such a shallow response. He was not 
loved, but his offer had been accepted — in all prob- 
ability because he was rich: that is, what was thought 
most of in him was what he valued least of all in 
himself. It was quite possible that Yulia, who was 
so pure and believed in God, had not once thought 
of his money; but she did not love him — did not 
love him, and evidently she had interested motives, 
vague, perhaps, and not fully thought out — still, 
it was so. The doctor’s house with its common fur- 
niture was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the 
doctor himself as a wretched, greasy miser, a sort 
of operatic Gaspard from “‘ Les Cloches de Corne- 
ville?’ “Fhe. very name “Yulia” had a skeae 
sound. He imagined how he and his Yulia would 
stand at their wedding, in reality complete strangers 
to one another, without a trace of feeling on her 
side, just as though their marriage had been made 
by a professional matchmaker; and the only con- 
solation left him now, as commonplace as the mar- 
riage itself, was the reflection that he was not the 
Srst, and would not be the last; that thousands of 
pecple were married like that; and that with time, 
when Yulia came to know him better, she would per- 
haps grow fond of him. 

“Romeo and Juliet!” he said, as he shut the 
novel, and he laughed. “I am Romeo, Nina. 


Three Years S37, 


You may congratulate me. I made an offer to Yulia 
Byelavin to-day.” 

Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but 
when she believed it, she began to cry; she was not 
pleased at the news. 

‘Well, I congratulate you,’ she said. ‘ But 
why is it so sudden?” 

“No, it’s not sudden. It’s been going on since 
March, only you don’t notice anything. . . . I fell 
in love with her last March when I made her ac- 
quaintance here, in your rooms.” 

“IT thought you would marry some one in our 
Moscow set,’’ said Nina Fyodorovna after a pause. 
“Girls in our set are simpler. But what matters, 
Alyosha, is that you should be happy — that mat- 
ters most. My Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, 
and there’s no concealing it; you can see what our 
life is. Of course any woman may love you for 
your goodness and your brains, but, you see, Yu- 
litchka is a girl of good family from a high-class 
boarding-school; goodness and brains are not enough 
for her. She is young, and, you, Alyosha, are not 
so young, and are not good-looking.” 

To soften the last words, she stroked his head and 
said: 

‘You’re not good-locking, but you’re a dear.” 

She was so agitated that a faint flush came into 
ner cheeks, and she began discussing eagerly whether 
it would be the proper thing for her to bless Alyosha 
with the ikon at the wedding. She was, she rea- 


222 The Darling and Other Stories 


soned, his elder sister, and took the place of his 
mother; and she kept trying to convince her dejected 
brother that the wedding must be celebrated in 
proper style, with pomp and gaiety, so that no one 
could find fault with it. 

Then he began going to the Byelavins’ as an ac- 
cepted suitor, three or four times a day; and now 
he never had time to take Sasha’s place and read 
aloud the historical novel. Yulia used to receive 
him in her two rooms, which were at a distance from 
the drawing-room and her father’s study, and he 
liked them very much. The walls in them were 
dark; in the corner stood a case of ikons; and there 
was a smell of good scent and of the oil in the holy 
lamp. Her rooms were at the furthest end of the 
house; her bedstead and dressing-table were shut off 
by a screen. The doors of the bookcase were cov- 
ered on the inside with a green curtain, and there 
were rugs on the floor, so that her footsteps were 
noiseless — and from this he concluded that she was 
of a reserved character, and that she liked a quiet, 
peaceful, secluded life. In her own home she was 
treated as though she were not quite grown up. She 
had no money of her own, and sometimes when they 
were out for walks together, she was overcome with 
confusion at not having a farthing. Her father al- 
lowed her very little for dress and books, hardly 
ten pounds a year. And, indeed, the doctor himself 
had not much money in spite of his good practice. 
He played cards every night at the club, and always 


Three Years 223 


lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses 
through a building society, and let them. ‘The ten- 
ants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was 
convinced that such speculations were profitable. 
He had mortgaged his own house in which he and 
his daughter were living, and with the money so 
raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had 
already begun to build on it a large two-storey 
house, meaning to mortgage it, too, as soon as it was 
finished. 

Laptev now lived in a sort of cloud, feeling as 
though he were not himself, but his double, and did 
many things which he would never have brought him- 
self to do before. He went three or four times to 
the club with the doctor, had supper with him, and 
offered him money for house-building. He even vis- 
ited Panaurov at his other establishment. It some- 
how happened that Panaurov invited him to dinner, 
and without thinking, Laptev accepted. He was re- 
ceived by a lady of five-and-thirty. She was tall and 
thin, with hair touched with grey, and black eye- 
brows, apparently not Russian. There were white 
patches of powder on her face. She gave him a 
honeyed smile and pressed his hand Jerkily, so that 
the bracelets on her white hands tinkled. It seemed 
to Laptev that she smiled like that because she 
wanted to conceal from herself and from others that 
she was unhappy. He also saw two little girls, aged 
five and three, who had a marked likeness to Sasha. 
For dinner they had milk-soup, cold veal, and choc- 


224 The Darling and Other Stories 


olate. It was insipid and not good; but the table 
was splendid, with gold forks, bottles of Soyer, and 
cayenne pepper, an extraordinary bizarre cruet- 
stand, and a gold pepper-pot. 

It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that 
Laptev realised how very inappropriate it was for 
him to be dining there. The lady was embarrassed, 
and kept smiling, showing her teeth. Panaurov ex- 
pounded didactically what being in love was, and 
what it was due to. 

“We have in it an example of the action of elec- 
tricity,’ he said in French, addressing the lady. 
“Every man has in his skin microscopic glands 
which contain currents of electricity. If you meet 
with a person whose currents are parallel with your 
own, then you get love.”’ 

When Laptev went home and his sister asked him 
where he had been he felt awkward, and made no 
answer. 

He felt himself in a false position right up to the 
time of the wedding. His love grew more intense 
every day, and Yulia seemed to him a poetic and 
exalted creature; but, all the same, there was no 
mutual love, and the truth was that he was buying 
her and she was selling herself. Sometimes, think- 
ing things over, he fell into despair and asked him- 
self: should he run away? He did not sleep for 
nights together, and kept thinking how he should 
meet in Moscow the lady whom he had called in 
his letters ‘‘a certain person,” and what attitude 


Three Years 225 


his father and his brother, difficult people, would 
take towards his marriage and towards Yulia. He 
was afraid that his father would say some- 
thing rude to Yulia at their first meeting. And 
something strange had happened of late to his 
brother Fyodor. In his long letters he had taken 
to writing of the importance of health, of the effect 
of illness on the mental condition, of the meaning 
of religion, but not a word about Moscow or busi- 
ness. ‘hese letters irritated Laptev, and he thought 
his brother’s character was changing for the worse. 

The wedding was in September. The ceremony 
took place at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
after mass, and the same day the young couple set 
off for Moscow. When Laptev and his wife, in a 
black dress with a long train, already looking not 
a girl but a married woman, said good-bye to Nina 
Fyodorovna, the invalid’s face worked, but there 
was no tear in her dry eyes. She said: 

“If — which God forbid—JI should die, take 
care of my little girls.” 

‘“Oh, I promise!” answered Yulia Sergeyevna, 
and her lips and eyelids began quivering too. 

‘““T shall come to see you in October,” said Lap- 
tev, much moved. ‘ You must get better, my dar- 
ling.” 

They travelled in a special compartment. Both 
felt depressed and uncomfortable. She sat in the 
corner without taking off her hat, and made a show 
of dozing, and he lay on the seat opposite, and he 


226 ‘The Darling and Other Stories 


was disturbed by various thoughts — of his father, 
of “a certain person,” whether Yulia would like her 
Moscow flat. And looking at his wife, who did not 
love him, he wondered dejectedly ‘‘ why this had 
happened.” 


V 


The Laptevs had a wholesale business in Moscow, 
dealing in fancy goods: fringe, tape, trimmings, cro- 
chet cotton, buttons, and so on. The gross receipts 
reached two millions a year; what the net profit was, 
no one knew but the old father. The sons and the 
clerks estimated the profits at approximately three 
hundred thousand, and said that it would have been 
a hundred thousand more if the old man had not 
“been too free-handed ’’— that is, had not allowed 
credit indiscriminately. In the last ten years alone 
the bad debts had mounted up to the sum of a mil- 
lion; and when the subject was referred to, the sen- 
ior clerk would wink slyly and deliver himself of 
sentences the meaning of which was not clear to 
every one: 

‘The psychological sequences of the age.” 

Their chief commercial operations were conducted 
in the town market in a building which was called 
the warehouse. The entrance to the warehouse was 
in the yard, where it was always dark, and smelt of 
matting and where the dray-horses were always 
stamping their hoofs on the asphalt. A very hum- 
ble-looking door, studded with iron, led from the 


Three: Years 227 


yard into a room with walls discoloured by damp 
and scrawled over with charcoal, lighted up by a 
narrow window covered by an iron grating. Then 
on the left was another room larger and cleaner with 
an iron stove and a couple of chairs, though it, too, 
had a prison window: this was the office, and from 
it a narrow stone staircase led up to the second 
storey, where the principal room was. This was 
rather a large room, but owing to the perpetual dark- 
ness, the low-pitched ceiling, the piles of boxes and 
bales, and the numbers of men that kept flitting to 
and fro in it, it made as unpleasant an impression on 
a newcomer as the others. In the offices on the top 
storey the goods lay in bales, in bundles and in card- 
board boxes on the shelves; there was no order nor 
neatness in the arrangement of it, and if crimson 
threads, tassels, ends of fringe, had not peeped out 
here and there from holes in the paper parcels, no 
one could have guessed what was being bought and 
sold here. And looking at these crumpled paper 
parcels and boxes, no one would have believed that 
a million was being made out of such trash, and 
that fifty men were employed every day in this ware- 
house, not counting the buyers. 

When at midday, on the day after his arrival at 
Moscow, Laptev went into the warehouse, the work- 
men packing the goods were hammering so loudly 
that in the outer room and the office no one heard 
him come in. A postman he knew was coming down 
the stairs with a bundle of letters in his hand; he 


228 The Darling and Other Stories 


was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Lap- 
tev either. The first person to meet him upstairs 
was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was so 
like him that they passed for twins. This resem- 
blance always reminded Laptev of his own personal 
appearance, and now, seeing before him a short, 
red-faced man with rather thin hair, with narrow 
plebeian hips, looking so uninteresting and so unin- 
tellectual, he asked himself: 

“Can I really look like that?” 

““ How glad I am to see you!” said Fyodor, kiss- 
ing his brother and pressing his hand warmly. ‘I 
have been impatiently looking forward to seeing 
you every day, my dear fellow. When you wrote 
that you were getting married, I was tormented with 
curiosity, and I’ve missed you, too, brother. Only 
fancy, it’s six months since we saw each other. 
Well? How goes it? Nina’s very bad? Awfully 
bad?” 

 Awfully bad.” 

“It’s in God's hands,” sighed Fyodor. ‘‘ Well, 
what of your wife? She’s a beauty, no doubt? I 
love her already. Of course, she is my little sister 
now. We'll make much of her between us.” 

Laptev saw the broad, bent back —so familiar 
to him — of his father, Fyodor Stepanovitch. The 
old man was sitting on a stool near the counter, talk- 
ing to a customer. 

“Father, God has sent us joy!” cried Fyodor. 
“Brother has come!” 


Three Years 229 


Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exception- 
ally powerful build, so that, in spite of his wrinkles 
and eighty years, he still looked a hale and vigor- 
ous man. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice, 
that resounded from his broad chest as from a bar- 
rel. He wore no beard, but a short-clipped mili- 
tary moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was 
always too hot, he used all the year round to wear 
a canvas coat at home and at the warehouse. He 
had lately had an operation for cataract. His sight 
was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk 
to the customers and have tea and jam with 
them. 

Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then 
his lips. 

“It’s a good Jong time since we saw you, hon- 
oured sir,” said the old man —‘‘a good long time. 
Well, am I to congratulate you on entering the state 
of holy matrimony? Very well, then; I congratu- 
late you.” 

And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent 
down and kissed him. 

“Well, have you brought your young lady?” the 
old man asked, and without waiting for an answer, 
he said, addressing the customer: ‘“ ‘ Herewith I 
beg to inform you, father, that I’m going to marry 
such and such a young lady.’ Yes. But as for ask- 
ing for his father’s counsel or blessing, that’s not 
in the rules nowadays. Now they go their own 
way. When I married I was over forty, but I went 


230 The Darling and Other Stories 


on my knees to my father and asked his advice. 
Nowadays we've none of that.” 

The old man was delighted to see his son, but 
thought it unseemly to show his affection or make 
any display of his joy. His voice and his manner 
of saying “ your young lady” brought back to Lap- 
tev the depression he had always felt in the ware- 
house. Here every trifling detail reminded him of 
the past, when he used to be flogged and put on 
Lenten fare; he knew that even now boys were 
thrashed and punched in the face till their noses bled, 
and that when those boys grew up they would beat 
others. And before he had been five minutes in the 
warehouse, he always felt as though he were being 
scolded or punched in the face. 

Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and 
said to his brother: 

‘Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov 
benefactor, Grigory Timofeitch. He might serve 
as an example for the young men of the day; he’s 
passed his fiftieth birthday, and he has tiny chil- 
aren.” 

The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old 
man with a pale face, laughed too. 

‘““Nature above the normal capacity,” observed 
the head-clerk, who was standing at the counter close 
by. ‘It always comes out when it’s there.” 

The head-clerk — a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, 
with a dark beard, and a pencil behind his ear — 
usually expressed his ideas vaguely in roundabout 


” 


Three Years 231 


hints, while his sly smile betrayed that he attached 
particular significance to his words. He liked to 
obscure his utterances with bookish words, which he 
understood in his own way, and many such words 
he used in a wrong sense. For instance, the word 
“except.” When he had expressed some opinion 
positively and did not want to be contradicted, he 
would stretch out his hand and pronounce: 

* Except!” 

And what was most astonishing, the customers 
and the other clerks understood him perfectly. 
His name was Ivan Vassilitch Potchatkin, and he 
came from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev, 
he expressed himself as follows: 

“It’s the reward of valour, for the female heart 
is a strong opponent.” 

Another important person in the warehouse was 
a clerk called Makeitchev — a stout, solid, fair man 
with whiskers and a perfectly bald head. He went 
up to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully in 
a low voice: 

‘‘T have the honour, sir. ... The Lord has 
heard your parent’s prayer. Thank God.” 

Then the other clerks began coming up to con- 
gratulate him on his marriage. They were all fash- 
ionably dressed, and looked like perfectly well-bred, 
educated men. Since between every two words they 
put in a ‘“‘sir,’’ their congratulations — something 
like ‘‘ Best wishes, sir, for happiness, sir,’’ uttered 
very rapidly in a low voice — sounded rather like 


232 The Darling and Other Stories 


the hiss of a whip in the air —‘‘ Shshsh-sssss!” 

Laptev was soon bored and longing to go home, 
but it was awkward to go away. He was obliged 
to stay at least two hours at the warehouse to keep 
up appearances. He walked away from the counter 
and began asking Makeitchev whether things had 
gone well while he was away, and whether any- 
thing new had turned up, and the clerk answered 
him respectfully, avoiding his eyes. A boy with a 
cropped head, wearing a grey blouse, handed Laptev 
a glass of tea without a saucer; not long afterwards 
another boy, passing by, stumbled over a box, and 
almost fell down, and Makeitchev’s face looked 
suddenly spiteful and ferocious like a wild beast’s, 
and he shouted at him: 

“ Keep on your feet! ” 

The clerks were pleased that their young master 
was married and had come back at last; they looked 
at him with curiosity and friendly feeling, and each 
one thought it his duty to say something agreeable 
when he passed him. But Laptev was convinced 
that it was not genuine, and that they were only 
flattering him because they were afraid of him. 
He never could forget how fifteen years before, a 
clerk, who was mentally deranged, had run out into 
the street with nothing on but his shirt and shak- 
ing his fists at the windows, shouted that he had 
been ill-treated; and how, when the poor fellow had 
recovered, the clerks had jeered at him for long 
afterwards, reminding him how he had called his 


Three Years 233 


employers “planters” instead of ‘ exploiters.” 
Altogether the employés at Laptevs’ had a very 
poor time of it, and this fact was a subject of con- 
versation for the whole market. The worst of it 
was that the old man, Fyodor Stepanovitch, main- 
tained something of an Asiatic despotism in his at- 
titude to them. Thus, no one knew what wages 
were paid to the old man’s favourites, Potchatkin 
and Makeitchev. They received no more than 
three thousand a year, together with bonuses, but 
he made out that he paid then seven. ‘The bonuses 
were given to all the clerks every year, but privately, 
so that the man who got little was bound from van- 
ity to say he had got more. Not one boy knew 
when he would be promoted to be a clerk; not one 
of the men knew whether his employer was satis- 
fied with him or not. Nothing was directly forbid- 
den, and so the clerks never knew what was allowed, 
and what was not. They were not forbidden to 
marry, but they did not marry for fear of displeas- 
ing their employer and losing their place. They 
were allowed to have friends and pay visits, but 
the gates were shut at nine o’clock, and every morn- 
ing the old man scanned them all suspiciously, and 
tried to detect any smell of vodka about them: 
‘* Now then, breathe,” he would say. 

Every clerk was obliged to go to early service, 
and to stand in church in such a position that the 
old man could see them all. The fasts were strictly 
observed. On great occasions, such as the birth- 


234 The Darling and Other Stories 


day of their employer or of any member of his fam- 
ily, the clerks had to subscribe and present a cake 
from Fley’s, or an album. ‘The clerks lived three 
or four in a room in the lower storey, and in the 
lodges of the house in Pyatnitsky Street, and at 
dinner ate from a common bowl, though there was 
a plate set before each of them. If one of the fam- 
ily came into the room while they were at dinner, 
they all stood up. 

Laptev was conscious that only, perhaps, those 
among them who had been corrupted by the old 
man’s training could seriously regard him as their 
benefactor; the others must have looked on him as 
an enemy and a ‘“‘planter.”” Now, after six months’ 
absence, he saw no change for the better; there was 
indeed something new which boded nothing good. 
His brother Fyodor, who had always been quiet, 
thoughtful, and extremely refined, was now running 
about the warehouse with a pencil behind his ear 
making a show of being very busy and business- 
like, slapping customers on the shoulder and shout- 
ing “Friends!” to the clerks. Apparently he had 
taken up a new role, and Alexey did not recognise 
him in the part. 

The old man’s voice boomed unceasingly. Hayv- 
ing nothing to do, he was laying down the law to 
a customer, telling him how he should order his life 
and his business, always holding himself up as an 
example. That boastfulness, that aggressive tone 
of authority, Laptev had heard ten, fifteen, twenty 


‘baree Years 235 


years ago. The old man adored himself; from 
what he said it always appeared that he had made 
his wife and all her relations happy, that he had 
been munificent to his children, and a benefactor 
to his clerks and employés, and that every one in 
the street and all his acquaintances remembered 
him in their prayers. Whatever he did was always 
right, and if things went wrong with people it was 
because they did not take his advice; without his 
advice nothing could succeed. In church he stood 
in the foremost place, and even made observations 
to the priests, if in his opinion they were not con- 
ducting the service properly, and believed that this 
was pleasing God because God loved him. 

At two o'clock every one in the warehouse was 
hard at work, except the old man, who still went on 
booming in his deep voice. To avoid standing idle, 
Laptev took some trimmings from a workgirl and 
let her go; then listened to a customer, a merchant 
from Vologda, and told a clerk to attend to him. 

“T, V. A.!” resounded on all sides (prices were 
denoted by letters in the warehouse and goods by 
numbers). ‘“R.I.T.!” As he went away, Laptev 
said good-bye to no one but Fyodor. 

‘“T shall come to Pyatnitsky Street with my wife 
to-morrow,” he said; “but I warn you, if father 
says a single rude thing to her, I shall not stay there 
another minute.” 

“You're the same as ever,” sighed Fyodor. 
“ Marriage has not changed you. You must be pa- 


236 The Darling and Other Stories 


tient with the old man. So till eleven o’clock, then. 
We shall expect you impatiently. Come directly 
after mass, then.” 

‘“T don’t go to mass.” 

‘That does not matter. The great thing is not 
to be later than eleven, so you may be in time to 
pray to God and to lunch with us. Give my greet- 
ings to my little sister and kiss her hand for me. I 
have a presentiment that I shall like her,” Fyodor 
added with perfect. sincerity. “1 envy =yen, 
brother!” he shouted after him as Alexey went 
downstairs. 

‘““And why does he shrink into himself in that 
shy way as though he fancied he was naked?” 
thought Laptev, as he walked along Nikolsky 
Street, trying to understand the change that had 
come over his brother. ‘“‘ And his language is new, 
too: ‘Brother, dear brother, God has sent us joy; 
to pray to God ’— just like Iudushka in Shtchedrin.” 


VI 

At eleven o'clock the next day, which was Sun- 
day, he was driving with his wife along Pyatnitsky 
Street in a light, one-horse carriage. He was 
afraid of his father’s doing something outrageous, 
and was already ill at ease. After two nights in 
her husband’s house Yulia Sergeyevna considered 
her marriage a mistake and a calamity, and if she 
had had to live with her husband in any other town 
but Moscow, it seemed to her that she could not 


pree: x ears 237 


have endured the horror of it. Moscow enter- 
tained her —she was delighted with the streets, 
the churches; and if it had been possible to drive 
about Moscow in those splendid sledges with expen- 
sive horses, to drive the whole day from morning 
till night, and with the swift motion to feel the cold 
autumn air blowing upon her, she would perhaps not 
have felt herself so unhappy. 

Near a white, lately stuccoed two-storey house 
the coachman pulled up his horse, and began to turn 
to the right. They were expected, and near the 
gate stood two policemen and the porter in a new 
full-skirted coat, high boots, and goloshes. The 
whole space, from the middle of the street to the 
gates and all over the yard from the porch, was 
strewn with fresh sand. The porter took off his hat, 
the policemen saluted. Near the entrance Fyodor 
met them with a very serious face. 

“Very glad to make your acquaintance, little sis- 
ter,” he said, kissing Yulia’s hand. ‘ You're very 
welcome.” 

He led her upstairs on his arm, and then along 
a corridor through a crowd of men and women. 
The anteroom was crowded too, and smelt of in- 
cense. 

“T will introduce you to our father directly,” 
whispered Fyodor in the midst of a solemn, deathly 
silence. ‘‘ A venerable old man, pater-familias.”’ 

In the big drawing-room, by a table prepared for 
service, Fyodor Stepanovitch stood, evidently wait- 


238 The Darling and Other Stories 


ing for them, and with him the priest in a calotte, 
anda deacon. The old man shook hands with Yulia 
without saying a word. Every one was silent. 
Yulia was overcome with confusion. 

The priest and the deacon began putting on their 
vestments. A censer was brought in, giving off 
sparks and fumes of incense and charcoal. The 
candles were lighted. The clerks walked into the 
drawing-room on tiptoe and stood in two rows along 
the wall. There was perfect stillness, no one even 
coughed. 

‘The blessing of God,” began the deacon. 

The service was read with great solemnity; noth- 
ing was left out and two canticles were sung — to 
sweetest Jesus and the most Holy Mother of God. 
The singers sang very slowly, holding up the music 
before them. Laptev noticed how confused his 
wife was. While they were singing the canticles, 
and the singers in different keys brought out “ Lord 
have mercy on us,” he kept expecting in nervous sus- 
pense that the old man would make some remark 
such as, ‘‘ You don’t know how to cross yourself,” 
and he felt vexed. Why this crowd, and why this 
ceremony with priests and choristers? It was too 
bourgeois. But when she, like the old man, put her 
head under the gospel and afterwards several times 
dropped upon her knees, he realised that she liked 
it all, and was reassured. 

At the end of the service, during ‘‘ Many, many 


Three Years 239 


years,’ the priest gave the old man and Alexey the 
cross to kiss, but when Yulia went up, he put his 
hand over the cross, and showed he wanted to speak. 
Signs were made to the singers to stop. 

‘The prophet Samuel,” began the priest, “ went 
to Bethlehem at the bidding of the Lord, and there 
the elders of the town with fear and trembling asked 
him: ‘Comest thou peaceably?’ And the prophet 
answered: ‘Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice 
unto the Lord: sanctify yourselves and come with 
me to the sacrifice. Even so, Yulia, servant of 
God, shall we ask of thee, Dost thou come bringing 
peace into this house? ”’ 

Yulia flushed with emotion. As he finished, the 
priest gave her the cross to kiss, and said in quite a 
different tone of voice: 

‘“Now Fyodor Fyodorovitch must be married; 
it’s high time.” 

The choir began singing once more, people began 
moving, and the room was noisy again. The old 
man, much touched, with his eyes full of tears, kissed 
Yulia three times, made the sign of the cross over 
her face, and said: 

“This is your home. I’m an old man and need 
nothing.” 

The clerks congratulated her and said something, 
but the choir was singing so loud that nothing else 
could be heard. Then they had lunch and drank 
champagne. She sat beside the old father, and he 


240 The Darling and Other Stories 


talked to her, saying that families ought not to be 
parted but live together in one house; that separa- 
tion and disunion led to permanent rupture. 

‘“Pye made money and the children only do the 
spending of it,” he said. ‘ Now, you live with me 
and save money. It’s time for an old man like me 
bo‘rest.” 

Yulia had all the time a vision of Fyodor flitting 
about so like her husband, but shyer and more rest- 
less; he fussed about her and often kissed her hand. 

‘We are plain people, little sister,” he said, and 
patches of red came into his face as he spoke. ‘‘ We 
live simply in Russian style, like Christians, little 
sister.” 

As they went home, Laptev felt greatly relieved 
that everything had gone off so well, and that noth- 
ing outrageous had happened as he had expected. 
He said to his wife: 

‘You're surprised that such a stalwart, broad- 
shouldered father should have such stunted, nar- 
row-chested sons as Fyodor and me. Yes; but it’s 
easy to explain! Mly father married my mother 
when he was forty-five, and she was only seventeen. 
She turned pale and trembled in his presence. Nina 
was born first — born of a comparatively healthy 
mother, and so she was finer and sturdier than we 
were. Fyodor and I were begotten and born after 
mother had been worn out by terror. I can remem- 
ber my father correcting me — or, to speak plainly, 
beating me—before I was five years old. He 


LVIee ¥ Cars 241 


— used to thrash me with a birch, pull my ears, hit me 
on the head, and every morning when I woke up 
my first thought was whether he would beat me that 
day. Play and childish mischief was forbidden us. 
We had to go to morning service and to early mass. 
When we met priests or monks we had to kiss their 
hands; at home we had to sing hymns. Here you 
are religious and love all that, but I’m afraid of 
religion, and when I pass a church I remember my 
childhood, and am overcome with horror. I was 
taken to the warehouse as soon as I was eight years 
old. I worked like a working boy, and it was bad 
for my health, for I used to be beaten there every 
day. Afterwards when I went to the high school, 
I used to go to school till dinner-time, and after 
dinner I had to sit in that warehouse till evening; 
and things went on like that till I was twenty-two, 
till I got to know Yartsev, and he persuaded me to 
leave my father’s house. That Yartsev did a great 
deal for me. I tell you what,” said Laptev, and he 
laughed with pleasure: “let us go and pay Yartsev 
a visit at once. He’s a very fine fellow! How 
touched he will be!” 


Vil 


On a Saturday in November Anton Rubinstein 
was conducting in a symphony concert. It was very 
hot and crowded. Laptev stood behind the col- 
umns, while his wife and Kostya Kotchevoy were 
sitting in the third or fourth row some distance in 


242 The Darling and Other Stories 


front. At the very beginning of an interval a “ cer- 
tain person,’ Polina Nikolaevna Razsudin, quite 
unexpectedly passed by him. He had often since 
his marriage thought with trepidation of a possible 
meeting with her. When now she looked at him 
openly and directly, he realised that he had all this 
time shirked having things out with her, or writing 
her two or three friendly lines, as though he had 
been hiding from her; he felt ashamed and flushed 
crimson. She pressed his hand tightly and impul- 
sively and asked: 

‘“ Have you seen Yartsev?”’ 

And without waiting for an answer she went strid- 
ing on impetuously as though some one were push- 
ing her on from behind. 

She was very thin and plain, with a long nose; 
her face always looked tired, and exhausted, and 
it seemed as though it were an effort to her to keep 
her eyes open, and not to fall down. She had fine, 
dark eyes, and an intelligent, kind, sincere expres- 
sion, but her movements were awkward and abrupt. 
It was hard to talk to her, because she could not 
talk or listen quietly. Loving her was not easy. 
Sometimes when she was alone with Laptev she 
would go on laughing for a long time, hiding her face 
in her hands, and would declare that love was not 
the chief thing in life for her, and would be as whim- 
sical as a girl of seventeen; and before kissing her 
he would have to put out all the candles. She was 
thirty. She was married to a schoolmaster, but had 


“Varee: ears 243 


not lived with her husband for years. She earned 
her living by giving music lessons and playing in 
quartettes. 

During the ninth symphony she passed again 
as though by accident, but the crowd of men stand- 
ing like a thick wall behind the columns prevented 
her going further, and she remained beside him. 
Laptev saw that she was wearing the same little 
velvet blouse she had worn at concerts last year 
and the year before. Her gloves were new, and her 
fan, too, was new, but it was a common one. She 
was fond of fine clothes, but she did not know how 
to dress, and grudged spending money on it. She 
dressed so badly and untidily that when she was 
going to her lessons striding hurriedly down the 
street, she might easily have been taken for a young 
monk. 

The public applauded and shouted encore. 

“You'll spend the evening with me,” said Polina 
Nikolaevna, going up to Laptev and looking at him 
severely. ‘‘ When this is over we'll go and have 
tea. Do you hear? I insist on it. You owe me a 
great deal, and haven't the moral right to refuse 


me such a trifle.”’ 


“Very well; let us go,” Laptev assented. 

Endless calls followed the conclusion of the con- 
cert. The audience got up from their seats and 
went out very slowly, and Laptev could not go away 
without telling his wife. He had to stand at the 
door and wait. 


244 The Darling and Other Stories 


‘I’m dying for some tea,” Polina Nikolaevna 
said plaintively. ‘‘ My very soul is parched.” 

‘You can get something to drink here,” said 
Laptev. ‘‘ Let’s go to the buffet.” 

“Oh, I’ve no money to fling away on waiters. 
I’m not a shopkeeper.” 

He oftered her his arm; she refused, in a long, 
wearisome sentence which he had heard many times, 
to the effect that she did not class herself with the 
feebler fair sex, and did not depend on the services 
of gentlemen. 

As she talked to him she kept looking about at 
the audience and greeting acquaintances; they were 
her fellow-students at the higher courses and at the 
conservatorium, and her pupils. She gripped their 
hands abruptly, as though she were tugging at them. 
But then she began twitching her shoulders, and 
trembling as though she were in a fever, and at last 
said softly, looking at Laptev with horror: 

“Who is it you’ve married? Where were your 
eyes, you mad fellow? What did you see in that 
stupid, insignificant girl? Why, I loved you for 
your mind, for your soul, but that china doll wants 
nothing but your money!” 

‘Let us drop that, Polina,” he said in a voice of 
supplication. ‘“‘ All that you can say to me about 
my marriage I’ve said to myself many times already. 
. . . Don’t cause me unnecessary pain.” 

Yulia Sergeyevna made her appearance, wearing 
a black dress with a big diamond brooch, which her 


‘aiiree. ¥ ears 245 


father-in-law had sent her after the service. She 
was followed by her suite — Kotchevoy, two doc- 
tors of their acquaintance, an officer, and a stout 
_ young man in student’s uniform, called Kish. 

“You go on with Kostya,’’ Laptev said to his 
wife. ‘I’m coming later.” 

Yulia nodded and went on. Polina Nikolaevna 
gazed after her, quivering all over and twitching 
nervously, and in her eyes there was a look of re- 
pulsion, hatred, and pain. 

Laptev was afraid to go home with her, foresee- 
ing an unpleasant discussion, cutting words, and 
tears, and he suggested that they should go and have 
tea at a restaurant. But she said: 

‘No, no. I want to go home. Don’t dare to 
talk to me of restaurants.” 

She did not like being in a restaurant, because the 
atmosphere of restaurants seemed to her poisoned 
by tobacco smoke and the breath of men. Against 
all men she did not know she cherished a strange 
prejudice, regarding them all as immoral rakes, ca- 
pable of attacking her at any moment. Besides, the 
music played at restaurants jarred on her nerves and 
gave her a headache. 

Coming out of the Hall of Nobility, they took a 
sledge in Ostozhenka and drove to Savelovsky Lane, 
where she lodged. All the way Laptev thought 
about her. It was true that he owed her a great 
deal. He had made her acquaintance at the flat 
of his friend Yartsev, to whom she was giving les- 


246 ‘The Darling and Other Stories 


sons in harmony. Her love for him was deep and 
perfectly disinterested, and her relations with him 
did not alter her habits; she went on giving her les- 
sons and wearing herself out with work as before. 
Through her he came to understand and love music, 
which he had scarcely cared for till then. 

‘Half my kingdom for a cup of tea!” she pro- 
nounced in a hollow voice, covering her mouth with 
her muff that she might not catch cold. ‘‘ I’ve given 
five lessons, confound them! My pupils are as 
stupid as posts; I nearly died of exasperation. I 
don’t know how long this slavery can go on. T’m 
worn out. As soon as I can scrape together three 
hundred roubles, [ shall throw it all up and go to 
the Crimea, to lie on the beach and drink in ozone. 
How I love the sea — oh, how I love the sea!” 

‘You'll never go,” said Laptey. “To. beem 
with, you'll never save the money; and, besides, you’d 
grudge spending it. Forgive me, I repeat again: 
surely it’s quite as humiliating to collect the money 
by farthings from idle people who have music les- 
sons to while away their time, as to borrow it from 
your friends.” 

“T haven’t any friends,” she said irritably. 
‘““And please don’t talk nonsense. The working 
class to which I belong has one privilege: the con- 
sciousness of being incorruptible — the right to re- 
fuse to be indebted to wretched little shopkeepers, 
and to treat them with scorn. No, indeed, you don't 
buy me! I’m not a Yulitchka!” 


Three Years 247 


Laptev did not attempt to pay the driver, know- 
ing that it would call forth a perfect torrent of 
words, such as he had often heard before. She paid 
herself. 

She had a little furnished room in the flat of a 
solitary lady who provided her meals. Her big 
Becker piano was for the time at Yartsev’s in Great 
Nikitsky Street, and she went there every day to 
play on it. In her room there were armchairs in 
loose covers, a bed with a white summer quilt, and 
flowers belonging to the landlady; there were 
oleographs on the walls, and there was nothing that 
would have suggested that there was a woman, 
and a woman of university education, living in it. 
There was no toilet table; there were no books; 
there was not even a writing-table. It was evident 
that she went to bed as soon as she got home, and 
went out as soon as she got up in the morning. 

The cook brought in the samovar. Polina Niko- 
laevna made tea, and, still shivering —the room 
was cold — began abusing the singers who had sung 
in the ninth symphony. She was so tired she could 
hardly keep her eyes open. She drank one glass of 
tea, then a second, and then a third. 

‘“* And so you are married,” she said. ‘ But don’t 
be uneasy; I’m not going to pine away. I shall be 
able to tear you out of my heart. Only it’s annoy- 
ing and bitter to me that you are just as contempti- 
ble as every one else; that what you want in a woman 
is not brains or intellect, but simply a body, good 


248 The Darling and Other Stories 


looks, and youth. . . . Youth!” she pronounced 
through her nose, as though mimicking some one, 
and she laughed. ‘‘ Youth! You must have purity, 
reinheit! reinheit!”’ she laughed, throwing herself 
back in her chair. “ Reinheit!” 

When she left off laughing her eyes were wet with 
tears. : 

‘You're happy, at any rate?”’ she asked. 

ia No.”’ 

‘ Does she love you?” 

ims No.” 

Laptev, agitated, and feeling miserable, stood up 
and began walking about the room. 

“No,” he repeated. “If you want to new 
Polina, ’'m very unhappy. There’s no help for it; 
I’ve done the stupid thing, and there’s no correct- 
ing it now. I must look at it philosophically. She 
married me without love, stupidly, perhaps with 
mercenary motives, but without understanding, and 
now she evidently sees her mistake and is miserable. 
I see it. At night we sleep together, but by day 
she is afraid to be left alone with me for five min- 
utes, and tries to find distraction, society. With me 
she feels ashamed and frightened.” 

“And yet she takes money from you?” 

*<’That’s stupid, Polina!” eried Laptey.. “one 
takes money from me because it makes absolutely 
no difference to her whether she has it or not. She 
is an honest, pure girl. She married me simply be- 





Three Years 249 


- cause she wanted to get away from her father, that’s 
all.” 


“And are you sure she would have married you 
if you had not been rich? ”’ asked Polina. 

“Tm not sure of anything,” said Laptev de- 
jectedly. ‘Not of anything. I don’t understand 
anything. For God’s sake, Polina, don’t let us talk 
about it.” 

“Do you love her?” 

“* Desperately.” 

A silence followed. She drank a fourth glass, 
while he paced up and down, thinking that by now 
his wife was probably having supper at the doctors’ 
club. 

“But is it possible to love without knowing 
why?” asked Polina, shrugging her shoulders. 
‘“No; it’s the promptings of animal passion! You 
are poisoned, intoxicated by that beautiful body, 
that reinheit! Go away from me; you are unclean! 
Go to her!” 

She brandished her hand at him, then took up his 
hat and hurled it at him. He put on his fur coat 
without speaki.ig and went out, but she ran after 
him into the passage, clutched his arm above the el- 
bow, and broke into sobs. 

“Hush, Polina! Don’t!’ he said, and could 
not unclasp her fingers. ‘‘ Calm yourself, I entreat 
you.” 

She shut her eyes and turned pale, and her long 


250 The Darling and Other Stories 


nose became an unpleasant waxy colour like a 
corpse's, and Laptev still could not unclasp her fin- 
gers. She had fainted. He lifted her up care- 
fully, laid her on her bed, and sat by her for ten min- 
utes till she came to herself. Her hands were cold, 
her pulse was weak and uneven. 

‘“Go home,” she said, opening her eyes. ‘Go 
away, or I shall begin howling again. I must take 
myself in hand.” 

When he came out, instead of going to the doc- 
tors’ club where his friends were expecting him, he 
went home. All the way home he was asking him- 
self reproachfully why he had not settled down to 
married life with that woman who loved him so 
much, and was in reality his wife and friend. She 
was the one human being who was devoted to him; 
and, besides, would it not have been a grateful and 
worthy task to give happiness, peace, and a home 
to that proud, clever, overworked creature? Was 
it for him, he asked himself, to lay claim to youth 
and beauty, to that happiness which could not be, 
and which, as though in punishment or mockery, had 
kept him for the last three months in a state of 
gloom and oppression. The honeymoon was long 
over, and he still, absurd to say, did not know what 
sort of person his wife was. To her school friends 
and her father she wrote long letters of five sheets, 
and was never at a loss for something to say to 
them, but to him she never spoke except about the 
weather or to tell him that dinner was ready, or 


Puree: Years 251 


that it was supper-time. When at night she said 
her lengthy prayers and then kissed her crosses and 
ikons, he thought, watching her with hatred, 
‘“Ffere she’s praying. What’s she praying about? 
What about?” In his thoughts he showered in- 
sults on himself and her, telling himself that when 
he got into bed and took her into his arms, he was 
taking what he had paid for; but it was horrible. 
If only it had been a healthy, reckless, sinful 
woman; but here he had youth, piety, meekness, the 
pure eyes of innocence. . . . While they were en- 
gaged her piety had touched him; now the conven- 
tional definiteness of her views and convictions 
seemed to him a barrier, behind which the real truth 
could not be seen. Already everything in his mar- 
ried life was agonising. When his wife, sitting be- 
side him in the theatre, sighed or laughed spon- 
taneously, it was bitter to him that she enjoyed her- 
self alone and would not share her delight with him. 
And it was remarkable that she was friendly with 
all his friends, and they all knew what she was like 
already, while he knew nothing about her, and only 
moped and was dumbly jealous. 

When he got home Laptev put on his dressing- 
gown and slippers, and sat down in his study to read 
a novel. His wife was not at home. But within 
half an hour there was a ring at the hall door, and 
he heard the muffled footsteps of Pyotr running to 
open it. It was Yulia. She walked into the study 
in her fur coat, her cheeks rosy with the frost. 


252 The Darling and Other Stories 


“ There's a. great fire in Pryesnya,” she Said 
breathlessly. ‘There’s a tremendous glow. I’m 
going to see it with Konstantin Ivanovitch.”’ 

“Well, do, dear!”’ 

The sight of her health, her freshness, and the 
childish horror in her eyes, reassured Laptev. He 
read for another half-hour and went to bed. 

Next day Polina Nikolaevna sent to the ware- 
house two books she had borrowed from hin, all his 
letters and his photographs; with them was a note 
consisting of one word —“ basta.” 


Vill 


Towards the end of October Nina Fyodorovna 
had unmistakable symptoms of a relapse. ‘There 
was a change in her face, and she grew rapidly thin- 
ner. In spite of acute pain she still imagined that 
she was getting better, and got up and dressed every 
morning as though she were well, and then lay on 
her bed, fully dressed, for the rest of the day. And 
towards the end she became very talkative. She 
would lie on her back and talk in a low voice, speak- 
ing with an effort and breathing painfully. She 
died suddenly under the following circumstances. 

It was a clear moonlight evening. In the street 
people were tobogganing in the fresh snow, and their 
clamour fioated in at the window. Nina Fyodor- 
ovna was lying on ker back in bed, and Sasha, who 
had no one to take turns with her now, was sitting 
beside her half asleep, 





Three Years 253 


““T don’t remember his father’s name,” Nina 
Fyodoroyna was saying softly, ‘‘ but his name was 
Ivan Kotchevoy—a poor clerk. He was a sad 
drunkard, the Kingdom of Heaven be his! He 
used to come to us, and every month we used to give 
him a pound of sugar and two ounces of tea. And 
money, too, sometimes, of course. Yes. ... And 
then, this is what happened. Our Kotchevoy began 
drinking heavily and died, consumed by vodka. He 
left a little son, a boy of seven. Poor little orphan! 
. . . We took him and hid him in the clerk’s quar- 
ters, and he lived there for a whole year, without 
father’s knowing. And when father did see him, 
he only waved his hand and said nothing. When 
Kostya, the little orphan, was nine years old — by 
that time I was engaged to be married —I took 
him round to all the day schools. I went from one 
to the other, and no one would take him. And he 
cried. . . . ‘ What are you crying for, little silly?’ 
I said. I took him to Razgulyay to the second 
school, where — God bless them for it! — they took 
him, and the boy began going every day on foot 
from Pyatnitsky Street to Razgulyay Street and 
back again. ... Alyosha paid for him. ... By 
God’s grace the boy got on, was good at his lessons, 
and turned out well... . He’s a lawyer now in 
Moscow, a friend of Alyosha’s, and so good in sci- 
ence. Yes, we had compassion on a fellow-creature 
and took him into our house, and now I daresay, he 
remembers us in his prayers. ... Yes... .” 


254 The Darling and Other Stories 


Nina Fyodorovna spoke more and more slowly 
with long pauses, then after a brief silence she sud- 
denly raised herself and sat up. 

‘“There’s something the matter with me... 
something seems wrong,” she said. ‘‘ Lord have 
mercy on me! Oh, I can’t breathe! ”’ 

Sasha knew that her mother would soon die; see- 
ing now how suddenly her face looked drawn, she 
guessed that it was the end, and she was fright- 
ened. 

“Mother, you mustn’t!” she began sobbing. 
“On mustn't; 

“Run to the kitchen; let them go for father. I 
am very ill indeed.” 

Sasha ran through all the rooms calling, but there 
were none of the servants in the house, and the only 
person she found was Lida asleep on a chest in the 
dining-room with her clothes on and without a pil- 
low. Sasha ran into the yard just as she was with- 
out her goloshes, and then into the street. On a 
bench at the gate her nurse was sitting watching the 
tobogganing. From beyond the river, where the 
tobogganing slope was, came the strains of a military 


band. 

‘Nurse, mother’s dying!” sobbed Sasha. “ You 
must co .for father! ...° 

The nurse went upstairs, and, glancing at the sick 
woman, thrust a lighted wax candle into her hand. 
Sasha rushed about in terror and besought some 


one to go for her father, then she put on a coat 


Three Years 255 


and a kerchief, and ran into the street. From the 
servants she knew already that her father had an- 
other wife and two children with whom he lived 
in Bazarny Street. She ran out of the gate and 
turned to the left, crying, and frightened of unknown 
people. She soon began to sink into the snow and 
grew numb with cold. 

She met an empty sledge, but she did not take 
it: perhaps, she thought, the man would drive her 
out of town, rob her, and throw her into the ceme- 
tery (the servants had talked of such a case at tea). 
She went on and on, sobbing and panting with ex- 
haustion. When she got into Bazarny Street, she 
inquired where M. Panaurov lived. An unknown 
woman spent a long time directing her, and seeing 
that she did not understand, took her by the hand 
and led her to a house of one storey that stood 
back from the street. The door stood open. Sasha 
ran through the entry, along the corridor, and found 
herself at last in a warm, lighted room where her 
father was sitting by the samovar with a lady and 
two children. But by now she was unable to utter a 
word, and could only sob. Panaurov understood. 

“ Mother’s worse?’ he asked. ‘‘ Tell me, child: 
is mother worse?” 

He was alarmed and sent for a sledge. 

When they got home, Nina Fyodorovna was sit- 
ting propped up with pillows, with a candle in her 
hand. Her face looked dark and her eyes were 
closed. Crowding in the doorway stood the nurse, 


256 The Darling and Other Stories 


the cook, the housemaid, a peasant called Prokofy 
and a few persons of the humbler class, who were 
complete strangers. The nurse was giving them or- 
ders in a whisper, and they did not understand. _In- 
side the room at the window stood Lida, with a pale 
and sleepy face, gazing severely at her mother. 

Panaurov took the candle out of Nina Fyodoroy- 
na’s hand, and, frowning contemptuously, flung it 
on the chest of drawers. 

‘This is awful!” he said, and his shoulders quiv- 
ered. ‘‘ Nina, you must lie down,” he said affection- 
ately.. “Lie down, dear: 

She looked at him, but did not know him... . 
They laid her down on her back. 

When the priest and the doctor, Sergey Boriso- 
vitch, arrived, the servants crossed themselves de- 
voutly and prayed for her. 

‘’ What a sad business! ”’ said the doctor thought- 
fully, coming out into the drawing-room. ‘‘ Why, 
she was still young — not yet forty.” 

They heard the loud sobbing of the little girls. 
Panaurov, with a pale face and moist eyes, went up 
to the doctor and said in a faint, weak voice: 

‘“Do me a favour, my dear fellow. Send a tele- 
gram to Moscow. I’m not equal to it.” 

The doctor fetched the ink and wrote the follow- 
ing telegram to his daughter: 


“Madame Panaurov died at eight o’clock this eve- 
ning. ‘Tell your husband: a mortgaged house for 





Three Years 257 


sale in Dvoryansky Street, nine thousand cash. 
Auction on twelfth. Advise him not miss oppor- 
tunity.” 


IX 


Laptev lived in one of the turnings out of Little 
Dmitrovka. Besides the big house facing the street, 
he rented also a two-storey lodge in the yard at the 
back of his friend Kotchevoy, a lawyer’s assistant 
whom all the Laptevs called Kostya, because he had 
grown up under their eyes. Facing this lodge stood 
another, also of two storeys, inhabited by a French 
family consisting of a husband and wife and five 
daughters. 

There was a frost of twenty degrees. The win- 
dows were frozen over. Waking up in the morn- 
ing, Kostya, with an anxious face, took twenty drops 
of a medicine; then, taking two dumb-bells out of 
the bookcase, he did gymnastic exercises. He was 
tall and thin, with big reddish moustaches; but what 
was most noticeable in his appearance was the length 
of his legs. 

Pyotr, a middle-aged peasant in a reefer jacket 
and cotton breeches tucked into his high boots, 
brought in the samovar and made the tea. 

‘““Tt's very nice weather now, Konstantin Ivano- 
vitch,” he said. 

“Tt is, but I tell you what, brother, it’s a pity we 
can’t get on, you and I, without such exclamations.” 

Pyotr sighed from politeness. 


258 The Darling and Other Stories 


“What are the little girls doing?” “asked 
Kotchevoy. 

‘The priest has not come. Alexey Fyodorovitch 
is giving them their lesson himself.”’ 

Kostya found a spot in the window that was not 
covered with frost, and began looking through a 
field-glass at the windows of the house where the 
French family lived. 

‘“ There’s no seeing,” he said. 

Meanwhile Alexey Fyodorovitch was giving 
Sasha and Lida a scripture lesson below. For the 
last six weeks they had been living in Moscow, and 
were installed with their governess in the lower 
storey of the lodge. And three times a week a 
teacher from a school] in the town, and a priest, came 
to give them lessons. Sasha was going through the 
New Testament and Lida was going through the 
Old. The time before Lida had been set the story 
up to Abraham to learn by heart. 

“And so Adam and Eve had two sons,” said 
Laptev. ‘‘ Very good. But what were they called? 
Try to remember them! ”’ 

Lida, still with the same severe face, gazed 
dumbly at the table. She moved her lips, but with- 
out speaking; and the elder girl, Sasha, looked into 
her face, frowning. 

‘You know it very well, only you mustn’t be 
nervous,” said Laptev. ‘‘ Come, what were Adam's 
sons called?” 


‘“’ Abel and Canel,’”’ Lida whispered. 


Three Years 259 


“Cain and Abel,” Laptev corrected her. 

A big tear rolled down Lida’s cheek and dropped 
on the book. Sasha looked down and turned red, 
and she, too, was on the point of tears. Laptev 
felt a lump in his throat, and was so sorry for them 
he could not speak. He got up from the table 
and lighted a cigarette. At that moment Kotchevoy 
came down the stairs with a paper in his hand. The 
little girls stood up, and without looking at him, 
made curtsies. 

“For God’s sake, Kostya, give them their les- 
sons, said Laptev, turning to him. ‘I’m afraid I 
shall cry, too, and I have to go to the warehouse 
before dinner.” 

nk eipnt. 

Alexey Fyodorovitch went away. Kostya, with 
a very serious face, sat down to the table and drew 
the Scripture history towards him. 

* Well,” he said; “‘ where have you got to?” 

‘* She knows about the Flood,” said Sasha. 

“The Flood? All right. Let’s peg in at the 
Flood. Fire away about the Flood.’ Kostya 
skimmed through a brief description of the Flood in 
the book, and said: ‘‘I must remark that there 
really never was a flood such as is described here. 
And there was no such person as Noah. Some thou- 
sands of years before the birth of Christ, there was 
an extraordinary inundation of the earth, and that’s 
not only mentioned in the Jewish Bible, but in the 
books of other ancient peoples: the Greeks, the 


260 The Darling and Other Stories 


Chaldeans, the Hindoos. But whatever the inunda- 
‘tion may have been, it couldn't have covered the 
whole earth. It may have flooded the plains, but 
the mountains must have remained. You can read 
this book, of course, but don’t put too much faith 
iy it2”” 

Tears trickled down Lida’s face again. She 
turned away and suddenly burst into such loud sobs, 
that Kostya started and jumped up from his seat in 
great confusion. 

‘“T want to go home,” she said, “‘ to papa and to 
nurse.” 

Sasha cried too. Kostya went upstairs to his own 
room, and spoke on the telephone to Yulia Serge- 
yevna. 

‘“ My dear soul,” he said, “‘ the little girls are cry- 
ing again; there’s no doing anything with them.” 

Yulia Sergeyevna ran across from the big house 
in her indoor dress, with only a knitted shawl over 
her shoulders, and chilled through by the frost, be- 
gan comforting the children. 

‘Do believe me, do believe me,” she said in an 
imploring voice, hugging first one and then the other. 
‘Your papa’s coming to-day; he has sent a tele- 
gram. You're grieving for mother, and I grieve 
too. My heart’s torn, but what can we do? We 
must bow to God’s will!” 

When they left off crying, she wrapped them up 
and took them out for a drive. They stopped near 
the Iverskoy chapel, put up candles at the shrine, 


’ 


Three Years 261 


and, kneeling down, prayed. On the way back they 
went in Filippov’s, and had cakes sprinkled with 
poppy-seeds. 

The Laptevs had dinner between two and three. 
Pyotr handed the dishes. This Pyotr waited on 
the family, and by day ran to the post, to the ware- 
house, to the law courts for Kostya; he spent his 
evenings making cigarettes, ran to open the door at 
night, and before five o’clock in the morning was up 
lighting the stoves, and no one knew where he slept. 
He was very fond of opening seltzer-water bottles 
and did it easily, without a bang and without spilling 
a drop. 

“With God’s blessing,” said Kostya, drinking off 
a glass of vodka before the soup. 

At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; 
his bass voice, his phrases such as ‘*‘ Landed him 
one on the beak,” “ filth,” “ produce the samovar,” 
etc., his habit of clinking glasses and making senti- 
mental speeches, seemed to her trivial. But as she 
got to know him better, she began to feel very much 
at home with him. He was open with her; he liked 
talking to her in a low voice in the evening, and 
even gave her novels of his own composition to read, 
though these had been kept a secret even from such 
friends as Laptev and Yartsev. She read these 
novels and praised them, so that she might not dis- 
appoint him, and he was delighted because he hoped 
sooner or lated to become a distinguished author. 

In his novels he described nothing but country- 


262. The Darling and Other Stories 


house life, though he had only seen the country on 
rare occasions when visiting friends at a summer 
villa, and had only been in a real country-house once 
in his life, when he had been to Volokolamsk on law 
business. He avoided any love interest as though 
he were ashamed of it; he put in frequent descrip- 
tions of nature, and in them was fond of using such 
expressions as, ‘‘the capricious lines of the moun- 
tains, the miraculous forms of the clouds, the har- 
mony of mysterious rhythms. .. .’ His novels 
had never been published, and this he attributed to 
the censorship. 

He liked the duties of a lawyer, but yet he con- 
sidered that his most important pursuit was not the 
law but these novels. He believed that he had a 
subtle, esthetic temperament, and he always had 
leanings towards art. He neither sang nor played 
on any musical instrument, and was absolutely with- 
out an ear for music, but he attended all the sym- 
phony and philharmonic concerts, got up concerts 
for charitable objects, and made the acquaintance of 
Singers, 4.5". 

They used to talk at dinner. 

‘It’s a strange thing,” said Laptev, “my Fyo- 
dor took my breath away again! He said we must 
find out the date of the centenary of our firm, so as 
to try and get raised to noble rank; and he said 
it quite seriously. What can be the matter with 
him? I confess I begin to feel worried about 


him.” 


direc Years 263 
They talked of Fyodor, and of its being the fash- 


ion nowadays to adopt some pose or other. Fyodor, 
for instance, tried to appear like a plain merchant, 
though he had ceased to be one; and when the 
teacher came from the school, of which old Laptev 
was the patron, to ask Fyodor for his salary, the 
latter changed his voice and deportment, and be- 
haved with the teacher as though he were some one 
in authority. 

There was nothing to be done; after dinner they 
went into the study. They talked about the deca- 
dents, about *“‘ The Maid of Orleans,” and Kostya 
delivered a regular monologue; he fancied that he 
was very successful ii imitating Ermolova. Then 
they sat down and played whist. ‘The little girls 
had not gone back to the lodge but were sitting to- 
gether in one arm-chair, with pale and mournful 
faces, and were listening to every noise in the street, 
wondering whether it was their father coming. In 
the evening when it was dark and the candles were 
lighted, they felt deeply dejected. The talk over 
the whist, the footsteps of Pyotr, the crackling in 
the fireplace, jarred on their nerves, and they did 
not like to look at the fire. In the evenings they did 
not want to cry, but they felt strange, and there was 
a load on their hearts. They could not understand 
how people could talk and laugh when their mother 
was dead. 

‘““What did you see through the field-glasses to- 
day?’ Yulia Sergeyevna asked Kostya. 


264 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Nothing to-day, but yesterday I saw the old 
Frenchman having his bath.” 

At seven o’clock Yulia and Kostya went to the 
Little Theatre. Laptev was left with the little 
girls. 

‘“Tt’s time your father was here,” he said, look- 
ing at his watch. ‘‘ The train must be late.” 

The children sat in their arm-chair dumb and 
huddling together like animals when they are cold, 
while he walked about the room looking impatiently 
at his watch. It was quiet in the house. But just 
before nine o'clock some one rang at the bell. 
Pyotr went to open the door. 

Hearing a familiar voice, the children shrieked, 
burst into sobs, and ran into the hall. Panaurov 
was wearing a sumptuous coat of antelope skin, and 
his head and moustaches were white with hoar frost. 
“In a minute, in a minute,” he muttered, while 
Sasha and Lida, sobbing and laughing, kissed his 
cold hands, his hat, his antelope coat. With the 
languor of a handsome man spoilt by too much love, 
he fondled the children without haste, then went into 
the study and said, rubbing his hands: 

‘““T’ve not come to stay long, my friends. I’m go- 
ing to Petersburg to-morrow. They’ve promised to 
transfer me to another town.” 

He was staying at the Dresden Hotel. 


Three Years 265 


Xx 


A friend who was often at the Laptevs’ was Ivan 
Gavrilitch Yartsev. He was a strong, healthy man 
with black hair and a clever, pleasant face. He 
was considered to be handsome, but of late he had 
begun to grow stout, and that rather spoilt his face 
and figure; another thing that spoilt him was that 
he wore his hair cut so close that the skin showed 
through. 

At the University his tall figure and physical 
strength had won him the nickname of “the 
pounder’ among the students. He had taken his 
degree with the Laptev brothers in the faculty of 
philology —then he went in for science and now 
had the degree of magister in chemistry. But he 
had never given a lecture or even been a demon- 
strator. He taught physics and natural history in 
the modern school, and in two girls’ high schools. 
He was enthusiastic over his pupils, especially the 
girls, and used to maintain that a remarkable gene- 
ration was growing up. At home he spent his time 
studying sociology and Russian history, as well as 
chemistry, and he sometimes published brief notes 
in the newspapers and magazines, signing them 
“YY.” When he talked of some botanical or zoo- 
logical subject, he spoke like an historian; when he 
was discussing some historical question, he ap- 
proached it as a man of science. 

Kish, nicknamed “the eternal student,’’ was also 


266 The Darling and Other Stories 


like one of the family at the Laptevs’. He had been 
for three years studying medicine. Then he took 
up mathematics, and spent two years over each 
year’s course. His father, a provincial druggist, 
used to send him forty roubles a month, to which 
his mother, without his father’s knowledge, added 
another ten. And this sum was not only sufficient 
for his board and lodging, but even for such lux- 
uries as an overcoat lined with Polish beaver, gloves, 
scent, and photographs (he often had photographs 
taken of himself and used to distribute them among 
his friends). He was neat and demure, slightly 
bald, with golden side-whiskers, and he had the 
air of a man nearly always ready to oblige. He 
was always busy looking after other people’s affairs. 
At one time he would be rushing about with a sub- 
scription list; at another time he would be freezing 
in the early morning at a ticket office to buy tick- 
ets for ladies of his acquaintance, or at somebody’s 
request would be ordering a wreath or a bouquet. 
People simply said of him: ‘‘ Kish will go, Kish 
will do it, Kish will buy it.’ He was usually un- 
successful in carrying out his commissions. Re- 
proaches were showered upon him, people frequently 
forgot to pay him for the things he bought, but he 
simply sighed in hard cases and never protested. 
He was never particularly delighted nor disap- 
pointed; his stories were always long and boring; and 
his jokes invariably provoked laughter just because 


Three Years 267 


they were not funny. ‘Thus, one day, for instance, 
intending to make a joke, he said to Pyotr: 
‘Pyotr, you’re not a sturgeon;”’ and this aroused 
a general laugh, and he, too, laughed for a long 
time, much pleased at having made such a successful 
jest. Whenever one of the professors was buried, 
he walked in front with the mutes. 

Yartsev and Kish usually came in the evening to 
tea. If the Laptevs were not going to the theatre 
or a concert, the evening tea lingered on till sup- 
per. One evening in February the following con- 
versation took place: 

‘“A work of art is only significant and valuable 
when there are some serious social problems con- 
tained in its central idea,’ said Kostya, looking 
wrathfully at Yartsev. ‘‘If there is in the work a 
protest against serfdom, or the author takes up arms 
against the vulgarity of aristocratic society, the work 
is significant and valuable. The novels that are 
taken up with ‘ Ach!’ and ‘Och!’ and ‘she loved 
him, while he ceased to love her,’ I tell you, are 
worthless, and damn them all, I say!” 

‘“T agree with you, Konstantin Ivanovitch,” said 
Yulia Sergeyevna. ‘“‘One describes a love scene; 
another, a betrayal; and the third, meeting again 
after separation. Are there no other subjects? 
Why, there are many people sick, unhappy, har- 
assed by poverty, to whom reading all that must be 
distasteful.” 


268 The Darling and Other Stories — 


It was disagreeable to Laptev to hear his wife, 
not yet twenty-two, speaking so seriously and coldly 
about love. He understood why this was so. 

‘If poetry does not solve questions that seem so 
important,” said Yartsev, ‘‘ you should turn to works 
on technical subjects, criminal law, or finance, read 
scientific pamphlets. What need is there to discuss 
in ‘ Romeo and Juliet,’ liberty of speech, or the dis- 
infecting of prisons, instead of love, when you can 
find all that in special articles and textbooks?” 

‘That’s pushing it to the extreme,” Kostya in- 
terrupted. “We are not talking of giants like 
Shakespeare or Goethe; we are talking of the hun- 
dreds of talented mediocre writers, who would be 
infinitely more valuable if they would let love alone, 
and would employ themselves in spreading knowl- 
edge and humane ideas among the masses.” 

Kish, lisping and speaking a little through his 
nose, began telling the story of a novel he had lately 
been reading. He spoke circumstantially and with- 
out haste. Three minutes passed, then five, then 
ten, and no one could make out what he was talking 
about, and his face grew more and more indifferent, 
and his eyes more and more blank. 

‘Kish, do be quick over it,’ Yulia Sergeyevna 
could not resist saying; “it’s really agonizing!” 

“Shut up, Kish!’ Kostya shouted to him. 

They all laughed, and Kish with them. 

Fyodor came in. Flushing red in patches, he 


Three Years 269 


greeted them all in a nervous flurry, and led his 
brother away into the study. Of late he had taken 
to avoiding the company of more than one person 
at once. 

“Let the young people laugh, while we speak 
from the heart in here,” he said, settling himself in 
a deep arm-chair at a distance from the lamp. ‘“‘ It’s 
a long time, my dear brother, since we’ve seen each 
other. How long is it since you were at the ware- 
house? I think it must be a week.” 

‘Yes, there’s nothing for me to do there. And 
I must confess that the old man wearies me.” 

“Of course, they could get on at the warehouse 
without you and me, but one must have some oc- 
cupation. ‘In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt 
eat bread,’ as it is written. God loves work.” 

Pyotr brought in a glass of tea onatray. Fyodor 
drank it without sugar, and asked for more. He 
drank a great deal of tea, and could get through as 
many as ten glasses in the evening. 

‘“T tell you what, brother,” he said, getting up 
and going to his brother. ‘‘ Laying aside philo- 
sophic subtleties, you must get elected on to the 
town council, and little by little we will get you on 
to the local Board, and then to be an alderman. 
And as time goes on— you are a clever man and 
well-educated — you will be noticed in Petersburg 
and asked to go there — active men on the provin- 
cial assemblies and town councils are all the fashion 





270 The Darling and Other Stories 


there now — and before you are fifty you'll be a 
privy councillor, and have a ribbon across your shoul- 
ders.” 

Laptev made no answer; he knew that all this — 
being a privy councillor and having a ribbon over 
his shoulder — was what Fyodor desired for him- 
self, and he did not know what to say. 

The brothers sat still and said nothing. Fyodor 
opened his watch and for a long, long time gazed 
into it with strained attention, as though he wanted 
to detect the motion of the hand, and the expres- 
sion of his face struck Laptev as strange. 

They were summoned to supper. Laptev went 
into the dining-room, while Fyodor remained in the 
study. The argument was over and Yartsev was 
speaking in the tones of a professor giving a lec- 
ture? 

‘“Owing to differences of climate, of energy, of 
tastes, of age, equality among men is physically 
impossible. But civilised man can make this in- 
equality innocuous, as he has already done with 
bogs and bears. A learned man succeeded in mak- 
ing a cat, a mouse, a falcon, a sparrow, all eat out 
of one plate; and education, one must hope, will do 
the same thing with men. Life continually pro- 
gresses, civilisation makes enormous advances be- 
fore our eyes, and obviously a time will come when 
we shall think, for instance, the present condition 
of the factory population as absurd as we now do 


wares, Lats 271 


the state of serfdom, in which girls were exchanged 
for dogs.” 

‘That won’t be for a long while, a very long 
while,” said Kostya, with a laugh, “ not till Roths- 
child thinks his cellars full of gold absurd, and till 
then the workers may bend their backs and die of 
hunger. No; that’s not it. We mustn’t wait for 
it; we must struggle for it. Do you suppose because 
the cat eats out of the same saucer as the mouse — 
do you suppose that she is influenced by a sense of 
conscious intelligence? Nota bit of it! She’s made 
to do it by force.” 

‘Fyodor and I are rich; our father’s a capitalist, 
a millionaire. You will have to struggle with us,” 
said Laptev, rubbing his forehead with his hand. 
“Struggle with me is an idea I cannot grasp. I am 
rich, but what has money given me so far? What 
has this power given me? In what way am I hap- 
pier than you? My childhood was slavery, and 
money did not save me from the birch. When Nina 
was ill and died, my money did not help her. If 
people don’t care for me, I can’t make them like me 
if I spend a hundred million.” 

‘But you can do a great deal of good,” said 
Kish. 

“Good, indeed! You spoke to me yesterday of 
a mathematical man who is looking for a job. Be- 
lieve me, I can do as little for him as you can. I 
can give money, but that’s not what he wants. I 


272 The Darling and Other Stories 


asked a well-known musician to help a poor violin- 
ist, and this is what he answered: ‘ You apply to 
me just because you are not a musician yourself.’ 
- In the same way I say to you that you apply for 
help to me so confidently because you’ve never been 
in the position of a rich man.” 

“Why you bring in the comparison with a well- 
known musician I don’t understand!” said Yulia 
Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson. ‘‘ What has 
the well-known musician to do with it!” 

Her face was quivering with hatred, and she 
dropped her eyes to conceal the feeling. And not 
only her husband, but all the men sitting at the table, 
knew what the look in her face meant. 

“What has the well-known musician got to do 
with it?’ she said slowly. ‘‘ Why, nothing’s easier 
than helping some one poor.” 

Silence followed. Pyotr handed the woodcock, 
but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad. 
Laptev did not remember what he had said, but 
it was clear to him that it was not his words that 
were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the 
conversation at all. 

After supper he went into his study; intently, 
with a beating heart, expecting further humiliation, 
he listened to what was going on in the hall. An 
argument had sprung up there again. ‘Then Yart- 
sev sat down to the piano and played a sentimental 
song. He was a man of varied accomplishments; 


Three Years 273 


he could play and sing, and even perform conjur- 
ing tricks. 

‘““You may please yourselves, my friends, but 
I’m not going to stay at home,” said Yulia. ‘‘ We 
must go somewhere.” 

They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish 
to the merchant’s club to order a three-horse sledge. 
They did not ask Laptev to go with them because 
he did not usually join these expeditions, and be- 
cause his brother was sitting with him; but he took 
it to mean that his society bored them, and that he 
was not wanted in their light-hearted youthful com- 
pany. And his vexation, his bitter feeling, was so 
intense that he almost shed tears. He was posi- 
tively glad that he was treated so ungraciously, that 
he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, 
a money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would 
have been even more glad if his wife were to de- 
ceive him that night with his best friend, and were 
afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with 
hatred. . . . He was jealous on her account of their 
student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev, 
even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a 
passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to 
him. He longed to find her in another man’s arms, 
and to be rid of this nightmare forever. Fyodor 
was drinking tea, gulping it noisily. But he, too, 
got up to go. 

“Our old father must have got cataract,” he said, 


274 The Darling and Other Stories 


as he put on his fur coat. ‘“‘ His sight has become 
very poor.” 

Laptev put on his coat, too, and went out. After 
seeing his brother part of the way home, he took 
a sledge and drove to Yar’s. 

‘“ And this is family happiness!’ he said, jeering 
at himself. ‘“‘ This is love!” 

His teeth were chattering, and he did not know 
if it were jealousy or something else. He walked 
about near the tables; listened to a comic singer in 
the hall. He had not a single phrase ready if he 
should meet his own party; and he felt sure before- 
hand that if he met his wife, he would only smile 
pitifully and not cleverly, and that every one would 
understand what feeling had induced him to come 
here. He was bewildered by the electric light, the 
loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that 
the ladies he met looked at him. He stood at the 
doors trying to see and to hear what was going on 
in the private rooms, and it seemed to him that he 
was somehow playing a mean, contemptible part on 
a level with the comic singers and those ladies. 
Then he went to Strelna, but he found none of his 
circle there, either; and only when on the way home 
he was again driving up to Yar’s, a three-horse 
sledge noisily overtook him. ‘The driver was drunk 
and shouting, and he could hear Yartsev laughing: 
is Wa. he i’ 

Laptev returned home between three and four. 
Yulia Sergeyevna was in bed. Noticing that she 


‘Ehree: Years 275 


was not asleep, he went up to her and said sharply: 

“IT understand your repulsion, your hatred, but 
you might spare me before other people; you might 
conceal your feelings.”’ 

She got up and sat on the bed with her legs dan- 
gling. Her eyes looked big and black in the lamp- 
light. 

‘“T beg your pardon,” she said. 

He could not utter a single word from excitement 
and the trembling of his whole body; he stood facing 
her and was dumb. She trembled, too, and sat with 
the air of a criminal waiting for explanations. 

‘“* How I suffer!’ he said at last, and he clutched 
his head. ‘I’m in hell, and I’m out of my mind.” 

‘““ And do you suppose it’s easy for me?” she 
asked, with a quiver in her voice. ‘‘ God alone 
knows what I go through.” 

‘““You’ve been my wife for six months, but you 
haven't a spark of love for me in your heart. 
There’s no hope, not one ray of light! Why did 
you marry me?” Laptev went on with despair. 
“Why? What demon thrust you into my arms? 
What did you hope for? What did you want?” 

She looked at him with terror, as though she 
were afraid he would kill her. 

* iid 1 attract you? Did you like me?” he 
went on, gasping for breath. “No. Then what? 
What? Tell me what?” he cried. ‘Oh, the 
cursed money! The cursed money!” 

‘TI swear to God, no!” she cried, and she crossed 


) 


276 The Darling and Other Stories 


herself. She seemed to shrink under the insult, and — 
for the first time he heard her crying. ‘I swear _ 
to God, no!” she repeated. ‘‘I didn’t think about 
your money; I didn’t want it. I simply thought | 
should do wrong if I refused you. I was afraid of 
spoiling your life and mine. And now I am suf- 
fering for my mistake. I’m suffering unbearably! ” 

She sobbed bitterly, and he saw that she was hurt; 
and not knowing what to say, dropped down on the 
carpet before her. 

‘That’s enough; that’s enough,” he muttered. 
‘T insulted you because I love you madly.” He 
suddenly kissed her foot and passionately hugged 
it; “If. only a. ‘spark of love,” “he: amuiterea: 
“Come, he to me: tell meca lie! Dontisay areca 
enistalce fc.” 

But she went on crying, and he felt that she was 
only enduring his caresses as an inevitable conse- 
quence of her mistake. And the foot he had kissed 
she drew under her like a bird. He felt sorry 
for her. 

She got into bed and covered her head over; he 
undressed and got into bed, too. In the morning 
they both felt confused and did not know what to 
talk about, and he even fancied she walked unstead- 
ily on the foot he had kissed. 

Before dinner Panaurov came to say good-bye. 
Yulia had an irresistible desire to go to her own 
home; it would be nice, she thought, to go away and 
have a rest from married life, from the embarrass- 


‘Lhree: Years ee iy 


ment and the continual consciousness that she had 
done wrong. It was decided at dinner that she 
should set off with Panaurov, and stay with her father 
for two or three weeks until she was tired of it. 


XI 


She travelled with Panaurov in a reserved com- 
partment; he had on his head an astrachan cap of 
peculiar shape. 

“Yes, Petersburg did not satisfy me,” he said, 
drawling, with a sigh. ‘ They promise much, but 
nothing definite. Yes, my dear girl. I have been 
a Justice of the Peace, a member of the local Board, 
chairman of the Board of Magistrates, and finally 
councillor of the provincial administration. I think 
I have served my country and have earned the right 
to receive attention; but— would you believe it? 
— I can never succeed in wringing from the authori- 
ties 2 post in another town... .” 

Panaurov closed his eyes and shook his head. 

‘They don’t recognise me,’ he went on, as 
though dropping asleep. ‘‘Of course I’m not an 
administrator of genius, but, on the other hand, I’m 
a decent, honest man, and nowadays even that’s 
something rare. I regret to say I have not been al- 
ways quite straightforward with women, but in my 
relations with the Russian government I’ve always 
been a gentleman. But enough of that,” he said, 
opening his eyes; “let us talk of you. What put 
it into your head to visit your papa so suddenly?” 


278 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Well... . [had a little misunderstanding with 
my husband,” said Yulia, looking at his cap. 

“Yes. Whata queer fellow he is! All the Lap- 
tevs are queer. Your husband’s all right — he’s 
nothing out of the way, but his brother Fyodor is a 
perfect fool.” 

Panaurov sighed and asked seriously: 

‘And have you a lover yet?” 

Yulia looked at him in amazement and laughed. 

“Goodness knows what you're talking about.” 

It was past ten o’clock when they got out at a 
big station and had supper. When the train went 
on again Panaurov took off his greatcoat and his 
cap, and sat down beside Yulia. 

‘You are very charming, I must tell you,” he 
began. ‘“‘ Excuse me for the eating-house compari- 
son, but you remind me of fresh salted cucumber; 
it still smells of the hotbed, so to speak, and yet 
has a smack of the salt and a scent of fennel about 
it. As time goes on you will make a magnificent 
woman, a wonderful, exquisite woman. If this trip 
of ours had happened five years ago,” he sighed, “‘ I 
should have felt it my duty to join the ranks of your 
adorers, but now, alas, I’m a veteran on the retired 
list.” 

He smiled mournfully, but at the same time gra- 
ciously, and put his arm round her waist. 

‘You must be mad!” she said; she flushed crim- 
son and was so frightened that her hands and feet 
turned cold. 


Three Years 279 


‘Leave off, Grigory Nikolaevitch! ” 

“What are you afraid of, dear?” he asked 
softly. ‘‘ What is there dreadful about it? It’s 
simply that you’re not used to it.” 

If a woman protested he always interpreted it 
as a sign that he had made an impression on her 
and attracted her. Holding Yulia round the waist, 
he kissed her firmly on the cheek, then on the lips, 
in the full conviction that he was giving her intense 
gratification. Yulia recovered from her alarm and 
confusion, and began laughing. He kissed her once 
more and said, as he put on his ridiculous cap: 

“That is all that the old veteran can give you. 
A Turkish Pasha, a kind-hearted old fellow, was 
presented by some one —or inherited, I fancy it 
was —a whole harem. When his beautiful young 
wives drew up in a row before him, he walked round 
them, kissed each one of them, and said: ‘ That 
is all that I am equal to giving you.’ And that’s 
just what I say, too.”’ 

All this struck her as stupid and extraordinary, 
and amused her. She felt mischievous. Standing 
up on the seat and humming, she got a box of sweets 
from the shelf, and throwing him a piece of choco- 
late, shouted: 

Sicarcn| 

He caught it. With a loud laugh she threw him 
another sweet, then a third, and he kept catching 
them and putting them into his mouth, looking at 
her with imploring eyes; and it seemed to her that 


280 The Darling and Other Stories 


in his face, his features, his expression, there was 
a great deal that was feminine and childlike. And 
when, out of breath, she sat down on the seat and 
looked at him, laughing, he tapped her cheek with 
two fingers, and said as though he were vexed: 

‘* Naughty girl! ” 

“Take it,” she said, giving him the box, “1 
don’t care for sweet things.” 

He ate up the sweets — every one of them, and 
locked the empty box in his trunk; he liked boxes 
with pictures on them. 

‘““That’s mischief enough, though,” he said. 
‘It’s time for the veteran to go bye-bye.” 

He took out of his hold-all a Bokhara dressing- 
gown and a pillow, lay down, and covered himself 
with the dressing-gown. 

‘“‘ Good-night, darling!” he said softly, and sighed 
as though his whole body ached. 

And soon a snore was heard. Without the slight- 
est feeling of constraint, she, too, lay down and 
went to sleep. 

When next morning she drove through her native 
town from the station homewards, the streets seemed 
to her empty and deserted. ‘The snow looked grey, 
and the houses small, as though some one had 
squashed them. She was met by a funeral proces- 
sion: the dead body was carried in an open coffin 
with banners. 

‘“Meeting a funeral, they say, is lucky,” she 
thought. 


Three Years 281 


There were white bills pasted in the windows 
of the house where Nina Fyodorovna used to 
live. 

With a sinking at her heart she drove into her 
own courtyard and rang at the door. It was opened 
by a servant she did not know —a plump, sleepy- 
looking girl wearing a warm wadded jacket. As 
she went upstairs Yulia remembered how Laptev 
had declared his love there, but now the staircase 
was unscrubbed, covered with foot-marks. Up- 
stairs in the cold passage patients were waiting in 
their out-door coats. And for some reason her heart 
beat violently, and she was so excited she could 
scarcely walk. 

The doctor, who had grown even stouter, was 
sitting with a brick-red face and dishevelled hair, 
drinking tea. Seeing his daughter, he was greatly 
delighted, and even lacrymose. She thought that 
she was the only joy in this old man’s life, and much 
moved, she embraced him warmly, and told him 
she would stay a long time —till Easter. After 
taking off her things in her own room, she went back 
to the dining-room to have tea with him. He was 
pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets, 
humming, “ Ru—ru—ru”; this meant that he 
was dissatisfied with something. 

“You have a gay time of it in Moscow,” he 
ee am very-glad for your sake... .. Pm 
an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon give 
up the ghost and set you all free. And the wonder 


282 The Darling and Other Stories 


is that my hide is so tough, that I’m alive still! 
It’s amazing!” 

He said that he was a tough old ass that every 
one rode on. ‘They had thrust on him the care of 
Nina Fyodorovna, the worry of her children, and 
of her burial; and that coxcomb Panaurov would 
not trouble himself about it, and had even borrowed 
a hundred roubles from him and had never paid 
it back. 

‘Take me to Moscow and put me in a mad- 
house,” said the doctor. ‘‘ I’m mad; I’m a sim- 
ple child, as I still put faith in truth and justice.” 

Then he found fault with her husband for his 
short-sightedness in not buying houses that were 
being sold so cheaply. And now it seemed to Yulia 
that she was not the one joy in this old man’s life. 
While he was secing his patients, and afterwards 
going his rounds, she walked through all the rooms, 
not knowing what to do or what to think about. 
She had already grown strange to her own town and 
her own home. She felt no inclination to go into 
the streets or see her friends; and at the thought 
of her old friends and her life as a girl, she felt no 
sadness nor regret for the past. 

In the evening she dressed a little more smartly 
and went to the evening service. But there were 
only poor people in the church, and her splendid 
fur coat and hat made no impression. And it seemed 
to her that there was some change in the church as 
well as in herself. In old days she had loved it 


‘ntee Years 283 


when they read the prayers for the day at evening 
service, and the choir sang anthems such as ‘“‘ I 
will open my lips.” She liked moving slowly in 
the crowd to the priest who stood in the middle of 
the church, and then to feel the holy oil on her fore- 
head; now she only waited for the service to be 
over. And now, going out of the church, she was 
only afraid that beggars would ask for alms; it was 
such a bore to have to stop and feel for her pockets; 
besides, she had no coppers in her pocket now — 
nothing but roubles. 

She went to bed early, and was a long time in 
going to sleep. She kept dreaming of portraits of 
some sort, and of the funeral procession she had 
met that morning. The open coffin with the dead 
body was carried into the yard, and brought to a 
standstill at the door; then the cofin was swung 
backwards and forwards on a sheet, and dashed 
violently against the door. Yulia woke and jumped 
up in alarm. There really was a bang at the door, 
and the wire of the bell rustled against the wall, 
though no ring was to be heard. 

The doctor coughed. Then she heard the servant 
go downstairs, and then come back. 

“Madam!” she said, and knocked at the door. 
‘** Madam!” 

Synat ite.” said: Yulia. 

‘‘ A telegram for you!” 

Yulia went out to her with a candle. Behind 
the servant stood the doctor, in his night-clothes 


284 The Darling and Other Stories 


and greatcoat, and he, too, had a candle in his hand. 
“Our bell is broken,” he said, yawning sleepily. 
“It ought to have been mended long ago.” 
Yulia broke open the telegram and read: 


‘“We drink to your health—Yartsrev, KoTcHE- 
WOYs" 


‘Ah, what idiots!” she said, and burst out laugh- 
ing; and her heart felt light and gay. 

Going back into her room, she quietly washed 
and dressed, then she spent a long time in packing 
her things, until it was daylight, and at midday she 
set off for Moscow. 


XII 


In Holy Week the Laptevs went to an exhibition 
of pictures in the school of painting. The whole 
family went together in the Moscow fashion, the 
little girls, the governess, Kostya, and all. 

Laptev knew the names of all the well-known 
painters, and never missed an exhibition. He used 
sometimes to paint little landscape paintings when 
he was in the country in the summer, and he fancied 
he had a good deal of taste, and that if he had 
studied he might have made a good painter. When 
he was abroad he sometimes used to go to curio 
shops, examining the antiques with the air of a con- 
noisseur and giving his opinion on them. When he 
bought any article he gave just what the shopkeeper 
liked to ask for it and his purchase remained after- 


Three Years 285 


_ wards in a box in the coach-house till it disappeared 
altogether. Or going into a print shop, he would 
slowly and attentively examine the engravings and 
the bronzes, making various remarks on them, and 
would buy a common frame or a box of wretched 
prints. At home he had pictures always of large 
dimensions but of inferior quality; the best among 
them were badly hung. It had happened to him 
more than once to pay large sums for things which 
had afterwards turned out to be forgeries of the 
grossest kind. And it was remarkable that, though 
as a rule timid in the affairs of life, he was exceed- 
ingly bold and self-confident at a picture exhibition. 
Why? 

Yulia Sergeyevna looked at the pictures as her 
husband did, through her open fist or an opera-glass, 
and was surprised that the people in the pictures 
‘were like live people, and the trees like real trees. 
But she did not understand art, and it seemed to 
her that many pictures in the exhibition were alike, 
and she imagined that the whole object in painting 
was that the figures and objects should stand out 
as though they were real, when you looked at the 
picture through your open fist. 

‘That forest is Shiskin’s,” her husband explained 
to her. ‘“‘ He always paints the same thing. . . 
But notice snow’s never such a lilac colour as that. 
.. . And that boy’s left arm is shorter than his 
right.” 

When they were all tired and Laptev had gone 


286 The Darling and Other Stories 


to look for Kostya, that they might go home, Yulia 
stopped indifferently before a small landscape. In 
the foreground was a stream, over it a little wooden 
bridge; on the further side a path that disappeared 
in the dark grass; a field on the right; a copse; 
near it a camp fire — no doubt of watchers by night; 
and in the distance there was a glow of the evening 
sunset. 

Yulia imagined walking herself along the little 
bridge, and then along the little path further and 
further, while all round was stillness, the drowsy 
landrails calling and the fire flickering in the dis- 
tance. And for some reason she suddenly began 
to feel that she had seen those very clouds that 
stretched across the red part of the sky, and that 
copse, and that field before, many times before. 
She felt lonely, and longed to walk on and on along 
the path; and there, in the glow of sunset was the 
calm reflection of something unearthly, eternal. 

‘‘ How finely that’s painted!”’ she said, surprised 
that the picture had suddenly become intelligible to 
her. 

“Look, Alyosha! Do you see how peaceful it 
to ee 

She began trying to explain why she liked the 
landscape so much, but neither Kostya nor her hus- 
band understood her. She kept looking at the pic- 
ture with a mournful smile, and the fact that the 
others saw nothing special in it troubled her. ‘Then 
she began walking through the rooms and looking 


Three: Years 287 


at the pictures again. She tried to understand them 
and no longer thought that a great many of them 
were alike. When, on returning home, for the first 
time she looked attentively at the big picture that 
hung over the piano in the drawing-room, she felt 
a dislike for it, and said: 

“What an idea to have pictures like that!” 

And after that the gilt cornices, the Venetian 
looking-glasses with flowers on them, the pictures 
of the same sort as the one that hung over the 
piano, and also her husband’s and Kostya’s reflec- 
tions upon art, aroused in her a feeling of drear- 
iness and vexation, even of hatred. 

Life went on its ordinary course from day to 
day with no promise of anything special. The 
theatrical season was over, the warm days had come. 
There was a long spell of glorious weather. One 
morning the Laptevs attended the district court to 
hear Kostya, who had been appointed by the court 
to defend some one. They were late in starting, 
and reached the court after the examination of the 
witnesses had begun. A soldier in the reserve was 
accused of theft and housebreaking. ‘There were 
a great number of witnesses, washerwomen; they 
all testified that the accused was often in the house 
of their employer — a woman who kept a laundry. 
At the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross he came 
late in the evening and began asking for money; he 
wanted a pick-me-up, as he had been drinking, but 
no one gave him anything. Then he went away, 





288 The Darling and Other Stories 


but an hour afterwards he came back, and brought 
with him some beer and a soft gingerbread cake 
for the little girl They drank and sang songs al- 
most till daybreak, and when in the morning they 
looked about, the lock of the door leading up into 
the attic was broken, and of the linen three men’s 
shirts, a petticoat, and two sheets were missing. 
Kostya asked each witness sarcastically whether she 
had not drunk the beer the accused had brought. 
Evidently he was insinuating that the washerwomen 
had stolen the linen themselves. He delivered his 
speech without the slightest nervousness, looking 
angrily at the jury. 

He explained what robbery with housebreaking 
meant, and the difference between that and simple 
theft. He spoke very circumstantially and convinc- 
ingly, displaying an unusual talent for speaking at 
length and in a serious tone about what had been 
know to every one long before. And it was diffi- 
cult to make out exactly what he was aiming at. 
From his long speech the foreman of the jury could 
only have deduced “ that it was housebreaking but 
not robbery, as the washerwomen had sold the linen 
for drink themselves; or, if there had been robbery. 
there had not been housebreaking.’ But obviously, 
he said just what was wanted, as his speech moved 
the jury and the audience, and was very much liked. 
When they gave a verdict of acquittal, Yulia nodded 
to Kostya, and afterwards pressed his hand warmly. 


Three Years 289 


In May the Laptevs moved to a country villa at 
Sokolniki. By that time Yulia was expecting a baby. 


XII 


More than a year had passed. Yulia and Yart- 
sev were lying on the grass at Sokolniki not far from 
the embankment of the Yaroslav railway; a little 
distance away Kotchevoy was lying with hands un- 
der his head, looking at the sky. All three had been 
for a walk, and were waiting for the six o'clock train 
to pass to go home to tea. 

“Mothers see something extraordinary in their 
children, that is ordained by nature,” said Yulia. 
““A mother will stand for hours together by the 
baby’s cot looking at its little ears and eyes and 
nose, and fascinated by them. If any one else kisses 
her baby the poor thing imagines that it gives him 
immense pleasure. And a mother talks of nothing 
but her baby. I know that weakness in mothers, 
and I keep watch over myself, but my Olga really 
is exceptional. How she looks at me when I’m 
nursing her! How she laughs! She’s only eight 
months old, but, upon my word, I’ve never seen such 
intelligent eyes in a child of three.” 

“Tell me, by the way,” asked Yartsev: ‘“‘ which 
do you love most — your husband or your baby?”’ 

Yulia shrugged her shoulders. 

‘“T don’t know,” she said.“ I never was so very 
fond of my husband, and Olga is in reality my first 


290 The Darling and Other Stories 


love. You know that I did not marry Alexey for 
love. In old days I was foolish and miserable, and 
thought that I had ruined my life and his, and now 
I see that love is not necessary — that it is all non- 
sense.” 

‘But if it is not love, what feeling is it that binds 
you to your husband? Why do you go on living 
with him?” 

‘IT don’t know. . . . I suppose it must be habit. 
I respect him, I miss him when he’s away for long, 
but that’s — not love. He is a clever, honest man, 
and that’s enough to make me happy. He is very 
kind and good-hearted. . . .” 

‘“ Alyosha’s intelligent, Alyosha’s good,” said 
Kostya, raising his head lazily; “ but, my dear girl, 
to find out that he is intelligent, good, and inter- 
esting, you have to eat a hundredweight of salt 
with him. . . . And what’s the use of his goodness 
and intelligence? He can fork out money as much 
as you want, but when character is needed to resist 
insolence or aggressiveness, he is faint-hearted and 
overcome with nervousness. People like your 
amiable Alyosha are splendid people, but they are 
no use at all for fighting. In fact, they are no use 
for anything.” 

At last the train came in sight. Coils of perfectly 
pink smoke from the funnels floated over the copse, 
and two windows in the last compartment flashed 
so brilliantly in the sun, that it hurt their eyes to 
look at it. 


Three Years 291 


“Tea-time!’’ said Yulia Sergeyevna, getting up. 

She had grown somewhat stouter of late, and her 
movements were already a little matronly, a little 
indolent. 

“It’s bad to be without love though,” said Yart- 
sev, walking behind her. ‘‘ We talk and read of 
nothing else but love, but we do very little loving 
ourselves, and that’s really bad.” 

‘All that’s nonsense, Ivan Gavrilitch,” said 
Yulia. ‘‘ That’s not what gives happiness.” 

They had tea in the little garden, where mignon- 
ette, stocks, and tobacco plants were in flower, 
and spikes of early gladiolus were just opening. 
Yartsev and Kotchevoy could see from Yulia’s face 
that she was passing through a happy period of in- 
ward peace and serenity, that she wanted nothing but 
what she had, and they, too, had a feeling of peace 
and comfort in their hearts. Whatever was said 
sounded apt and clever; the pines were lovely — 
the fragrance of them was exquisite as it had never 
been before; and the cream was very nice; and Sasha 
was a good, intelligent child. 

After tea Yartsev sang songs, accompanying him- 
self on the piano, while Yulia and Kotchevoy sat 
listening in silence, though Yulia got up from time 
to time, and went softly indoors, to take a look at 
the baby and at Lida, who had been in bed for the 
last two days feverish and eating nothing. 

“My friend, my tender friend,” sang Yartsev. 
“No, my friends, I'll be hanged if I understand 


292 The Darling and Other Stories 


why you are all so against love!” he said, flinging 
back his head. ‘If I weren’t busy for fifteen hours 
of the twenty-four, I should certainly fall in love.” 

Supper was served on the verandah; it was warm 
and still, but Yulia wrapped herself in a shawl and 
complained of the damp. When it got dark, she 
seemed not quite herself; she kept shivering and beg- 
ging her visitors to stay a little longer. She re- 
galed them with wine, and after supper ordered 
brandy to keep them from going. She didn’t want 
to be left alone with the children and the servants. 

‘We summer visitors are getting up a perform- 
ance for the children,” she said. ‘‘ We have got 
everything — a stage and actors; we are only at a 
loss for a play. Two dozen plays of different sorts 
have been sent us, but there isn’t one that is suitable. 
Now, you are fond of the theatre, and are so good 
at history,’ she said, addressing Yartsev. ‘* Write 
an historical play for us.” 

“Well, I might.” 

The men drank up all the brandy, and prepared 
to go. 

It was past ten, and for summer-villa people that 
was late. 

“How dark it is! One can’t see a bit,” said 
Yulia, as she went with them to the gate. ‘I don’t 
know how you'll find vour way. But, isn’t it cold?” 

She wrapped herself up more closely and walked 
back to the porch. 


Three Years 293 


‘“T suppose my Alexey’s playing cards some- 
where,” she called to them. ‘‘ Good-night! ” 

After the lighted rooms nothing could be seen. 
Yartsev and Kostya groped their way like blind 
men to the railway embankment and crossed it. 

“One can’t see a thing,’ said Kostya in his bass 
voice, standing still and gazing at the sky. ‘“* And 
the stars, the stars, they are like new three-penny- 
bits. Gavrilitch!” 

‘“ Ah?” Yartsev responded somewhere in the 
darkness. 

‘“T say, one can’t see a thing. Where are you?” 

Yartsev went up to him whistling, and took his 
arm. 

“Hi, there, you summer visitors Kostya 
shouted at the top of his voice. ‘‘ We’ve caught 
a socialist.” 

When he was exhilarated he was always very 
rowdy, shouting, wrangling with policemen and cab- 
drivers, singing, and laughing violently. 

‘“ Nature be damned,” he shouted. 

‘“Come, come,” said Yartsev, trying to pacify 
him. ‘‘ You mustn’t. Please don’t.” 

Soon the friends grew accustomed to the dark- 
ness, and were able to distinguish the outlines of 
the tall pines and telegraph posts. From time to 
time the sound of whistles reached them from the 
station and the telegraph wires hummed plaintively. 
From the copse itself there came no sound, and there 


» 


294 The Darling and Other Stories 


was a feeling of pride, strength, and mystery in its 
silence, and on the right it seemed that the tops of 
the pines were almost touching the sky. The friends 
found their path and walked along it. There it was 
quite dark, and it was only from the long strip of 
sky dotted with stars, and from the firmly trodden 
earth under their feet, that they could tell they were 
walking along a path. They walked along side by 
side in silence, and it seemed to both of them that 
people were coming to meet them. Their tipsy ex- 
hilaration passed off. The fancy came into Yart- 
sev’s mind that perhaps that copse was haunted by 
the spirits of the Muscovite Tsars, boyars, and pa- 
triarchs, and he was on the point of telling Kostya 
about it, but he checked himself. 

When they reached the town gate there was a 
faint light of dawn in the sky. Still in silence, Yart- 
sev and Kotchevoy walked along the wooden pave- 
ment, by the cheap summer cottages, eating-houses, 
timber-stacks. Under the arch of interlacing 
branches, the damp air was fragrant of lime-trees, 
and then a broad, long street opened before them, 


and on it not a soul, not a light. . . . When they 
reached the Red Pond, it was daylight. 
‘“Nloscow — it’s a town that will have to suffer 


a great deal more,” said Yartsev, looking at the 
Alexyevsky Monastery. 

“What put that into your head?” 

“T don’t know. I love Moscow.” 

Both Yartsevy and Kostya had been born in 


Three Years 295 


Moscow, and adored the town, and felt for some 
reason antagonistic to every other town. Both 
were convinced that Moscow was a remarkable 
town, and Russia a remarkable country. In the 
Crimea, in the Caucasus, and abroad, they felt dull, 
uncomfortable, and ill at ease, and they thought 
their grey Moscow weather very pleasant and 
healthy. And when the rain lashed at the window- 
panes and it got dark early, and when the walls of 
the churches and houses looked a drab, dismal col- 
our, days when one doesn’t know what to put on 
when one is going out—such days excited them 
agreeably. 

At last near the station they took a cab. 

“Tt really would be nice to write an historical 
play,” said Yartsev, ‘ but not about the Lyapunovs 
or the Godunoys, but of the times of Yaroslav or 
of Monomach. .. . I hate all historical plays ex- 
cept the monologue of Pimen. When you have to 
do with some historical authority or even read a text- 
book of Russian history, you feel that every one 
in Russia is exceptionally talented, gifted, and inter- 
esting; but when I see an historical play at the 
theatre, Russian life begins to seem stupid, morbid, 
and not original.” 

Near Dmitrovka the friends separated, and Yart- 
sev went on to his lodging in Nikitsky Street. He 
sat half dozing, swaying from side to side, and 
pondering on the play. He suddenly imagined a 
terrible din, a clanging noise, and shouts in some un- 


296 The Darling and Other Stories 


known language, that might have been Kalmuck, 
and a village wrapped in flames, and forests near 
covered with hoarfrost and soft pink in the glow 
of the fire, visible for miles around, and so clearly 
that every little fir-tree could be distinguished, and 
savage men darting about the village on horseback 
and on foot, and as red as the glow in the sky. 

‘The Polovtsy,” thought Yartsev. 

One of them, a terrible old man with a blood- 
stained face all scorched from the fire, binds to 
his saddle a young girl with a white Russian face, 
and the girl looks sorrowful, understanding... . 
Yartsev flung back his head and woke up. 

‘“ My friend, my tender friend . . .”” he hummed. 

As he paid the cabman and went up his stairs, 
he could not shake off his dreaminess; he saw the 
flames catching the village, and the forest beginning 
to crackle and smoke. A huge, wild bear frantic 
with terror rushed through the village... . And 
the girl tied to the saddle was still looking. 

When at last he went into his room it was broad 
daylight. Two candles were burning by some open 
music on the piano. On the sofa lay Polina Razsu- 
din wearing a black dress and a sash, with a news- 
paper in her hand, fast asleep. She must have been 
playing late, waiting for Yartsev to come home, and, 
tired of waiting, fell asleep. 

“Hullo, she’s worn out,”’ he thought. 

Carefully taking the newspaper out of her hands, 
he covered her with a rug. He put out the candles 


Three Years 297 


and went into his bedroom. As he got into bed, 
he still thought of his historical play, and the tune 
of ‘“ My friend, my tender friend” was still ring- 
mo in his head... . 

Two days later Laptev looked in upon him for 
a moment to tell him that Lida was ill with diph- 
theria, and that Yulia Sergeyevna and her baby had 
caught it from her, and five days later came the 
news that Lida and Yulia were recovering, but the 
baby was dead, and that the Laptevs had left their 
villa at Sokolniki and had hastened back to Mos- 
cow. 


XIV 


It had become distasteful to Laptev to be long 
at home. His wife was constantly away in the 
lodge declaring that she had to look after the little 
girls, but he knew that she did not go to the lodge 
to give them lessons but to cry in Kostya’s room. 
The ninth day came, then the twentieth, and then 
the fortieth, and still he had to go to the cemetery 
to listen to the requiem, and then to wear himself out 
for a whole day and night thinking of nothing but 
that unhappy baby, and trying to comfort his wife 
with all sorts of commonplace expressions. He went 
rarely to the warehouse now, and spent most of his 
time in charitable work, seizing upon every pretext 
requiring his attention, and he was glad when he 
had for some trivial reason to be out for the whole 
day. He had been intending of late to go abroad, 


298 The Darling and Other Stories 


to study night-refuges, and that idea attracted him 
now. 

It was an autumn day. Yulia had just gone to 
the lodge to cry, while Laptev lay on a sofa in the 
study thinking where he could go. Just at that mo- 
ment Pyotr announced Polina Razsudin. Laptev 
was delighted; he leapt up and went to meet the 
unexpected visitor, who had been his closest friend, 
though he had almost begun to forget her. She 
had not changed in the least since that evening when 
he had seen her for the last time, and was just the 
same as ever. 

‘* Polina,” he said, holding out both hands to her. 
“What ages! If you only knew how glad I am to 
see you! Docome in!” 

Polina greeted him, jerked him by the hand, and 
without taking off her coat and hat, went into the 
study and sat down. 

‘““Tve come to you for one minute,” she said. 
“I haven’t time to talk of any nonsense. Sit down 
and listen. Whether you are glad to see me or not 
is absolutely nothing to me, for I don’t care a straw 
for the gracious attentions of you lords of creation. 
I’ve only come to you because I’ve been to five other 
places already to-day, and everywhere I was met 
with a refusal, and it’s a matter that can’t be put off. 
Listen,” she went on, looking into his face. “‘ Five 
students of my acquaintance, stupid, unintelligent 
people, but certainly poor, have neglected to pay 
their fees, and are being excluded from the uni- 


Three Years 299 


versity. Your wealth makes it your duty to go 
straight to the university and pay for them.” 

‘With pleasure, Polina.” 

“Flere are their names,” she said, giving him a 
list. ‘Go this minute; you’ll have plenty of time 
to enjoy your domestic happiness afterwards.” 

At that moment a rustle was heard through the 
door that led into the drawing-room; probably the 
dog was scratching itself. Polina turned crimson 
and jumped up. 

“Your Dulcinea’s eavesdropping,” she said. 
“That’s horrid!” 

Laptev was offended at this insult to Yulia. 

=pspes not here: she’s in the lodge,” he said. 
“And don’t speak of her like that. Our child is 
dead, and she is in great distress.” 

“You can console her,’ Polina scoffed, sitting 
down again; “she'll have another dozen. You 
don’t need much sense to bring children into the 
world.” 

Laptev remembered that he had heard this, or 
something very like it, many times in old days, and 
it brought back a whiff of the romance of the past, 
of solitary freedom, of his bachelor life, when he 
was young and thought he could do anything he 
chose, when he had neither love for his wife nor 
memory of his baby. 

“Let us go together,” he said, stretching. 

When they reached the university Polina waited 
at the gate, while Laptev went into the office; he 


300 The Darling and Other Stories 


came back soon afterwards and handed Polina five 
receipts. 

‘Where are you going now?” he asked. 

" doevarteers: 

“T'll come with you.” 

“But you'll prevent him from writing.” 

“No, I assure you I won’t,” he said, and looked 
at her imploringly. 

She had on a black hat trimmed with crape, as 
though she were in mourning, and a short, shabby 
coat, the pockets of which stuck out. Her nose 
looked longer than it used to be, and her face looked 
bloodless in spite of the cold. Laptev liked walk- 
ing with her, doing what she told him, and listening 
to her grumbling. He walked along thinking about 
her, what inward strength there must be in this 
woman, since, though she was so ugly, so angular, 
so restless, though she did not know how to dress, 
and always had untidy hair, and was always some- 
how out of harmony, she was yet so fascinating. 

They went into Yartsev’s flat by the back way 
through the kitchen, where they were met by the 
cook, a clean little old woman with grey curls; she 
was overcome with embarrassment, and with a hon- 
eyed smile which made her little face look like a 
pie, said: 

‘“* Please walk in.” 

Yartsev was not at home. Polina sat down to 
the piano, and beginning upon a tedious, difficult 
exercise, told Laptev not to hinder her. And with- 


Three Years 301 


out distracting her attention by conversation, he 
sat on one side and began turning over the pages 
of a “The Messenger of Europe.” After prac- 
tising for two hours — it was the task she set her- 
self every day —she ate something in the kitchen 
and went out to her lessons. Laptev read the con- 
tinuation of a story, then sat for a long time without 
readirg and without being bored, glad to think that 
he was too late for dinner at home. 

‘“Ha, ha, ha!” came Yartsev’s laugh, and he 
walked in with ruddy cheeks, looking strong and 
healthy, wearing a new coat with bright buttons. 
Mita. ha, hal” 

The friends dined together. Then Laptev lay on 
the sofa while Yartsev sat near and lighted a cigar. 
It got dark. 

‘‘T must be getting old,” said Laptev. “ Ever 
since my sister Nina died, I’ve taken to constantly 
thinking of death.” 

They began talking of death, of the immortality 
of the soul, of how nice it would be to rise again 
and fly off somewhere to Mars, to be always idle 
and happy, and, above all, to think in a new spe- 
cial way, not as on earth. 

“One doesn’t want to die,” said Yartsev softly. 
‘“No sort of philosophy can reconcile me to death, 
and I look on it simply as annihilation. One wants 
to live.” 

“You love life, Gavrilitch?”’ 

* Yes;.1 love it.” 


’ 


302. The Darling and Other Stories 


‘“Do you know, I can never understand myself 
about that. I’m always in a gloomy mood or else 
indifferent. I’m timid, without self-confidence; I 
have a cowardly conscience; I never can adapt my- 
self to life, or become its master. Some people talk 
nonsense or cheat, and even so enjoy life, while I 
consciously do good, and feel nothing but uneasiness 
or complete indifference. I explain all that, Ga- 
vrilitch, by my being a slave, the grandson of a serf. 
Before we plebeians fight our way into the true path, 
many of our sort will perish on the way.” 

‘“That’s all quite right, my dear fellow,” said 
Yartsev, and he sighed. ‘‘ That only proves once 
again how rich and varied Russian life is. Ah, how 
rich it is! Do you know, I feel more convinced 
every day that we are on the eve of the greatest 
triumph, and I should like to live to take part in it. 
Whether you like to believe it or not, to my thinking 
a remarkable generation is growing up. It gives 
me great enjoyment to teach the children, especially 
the girls. They are wonderful children! ” 

Yartsev went to the piano and struck a chord. 

‘“T’m a chemist, I think in chemical terms, and 
I shall die a chemist,” he went on. “ But I am 
ereedy, and I am afraid of dying unsatished; and 
chemistry is not enough for me, and I seize upon 
Russian history, history of art, the science of teach- 
ing music. ... Your wife asked me in the sum- 
mer to write an historical play, and now I'm long- 
ing to write and write. I feel as though I could 


Three Years 303 


sit for three days and three nights without moving, 
writing all the time. [I am worn out with ideas — 
my brain’s crowded with them, and I feel as though 
there were a pulse throbbing in my head. I don’t 
in the least want to become anything special, to 
create something great. I simply want to live, to 
dream, to hope, to be in the midst of everything. 
. . . Life is short, my dear fellow, and one must 
make the most of everything.” 

After this friendly talk, which was not over till 
midnight, Laptev took to coming to see Yartsev 
almost every day. He felt drawn to him. As a 
rule he came towards evening, lay down on the sofa, 
and waited patiently for Yartsev to come in, with- 
out feeling in the least bored. When Yartsev came 
back from his work, he had dinner, and sat down 
to work; but Laptev would ask him a question, a 
conversation would spring up, and there was no more 
thought of work and at midnight the friends parted 
very well pleased with one another. 

But this did not last long. Arriving one day at 
Yartsev’s, Laptev found no one there but Polina, 
who was sitting at the piano practising her exer- 
cises. She looked at him with a cold, almost hos- 
tile expression, and asked without shaking hands: 

“Tell me, please: how much longer is this going 
enn 

“This? What?” asked Laptev, not under- 
standing. 

‘“You come here every day and hinder Yartsev 


304 The Darling and Other Stories 


from working. Yartsev is not a tradesman; he is 
a scientific man, and every moment of his life is 
precious. You ought to understand and to have 
some little delicacy!” 

“If you think that I hinder him,” said Laptev, 
mildly, disconcerted, ‘I will give up my visits.” 

‘Quite right, too. You had better go, or he 
may be home in a minute and find you here.” 

The tone in which this was said, and the indiffer- 
ence in Polina’s eyes, completely disconcerted him. 
She had absolutely no sort of feeling for him now, 
except the desire that he should go as soon as pos- 
sible — and what a contrast it was to her old love 
for him! He went out without shaking hands with 
her, and he fancied she would call out to him, bring 
him back, but he heard the scales again, and as he 
slowly went down the stairs he realised that he had 
become a stranger to her now. 

Three days later Yartsev came to spend the even- 
ing with him. 

“IT have news,’ he said, laughing; ~ Pouns 
Nikolaevna has moved into my rooms altogether.” 
He was a little confused, and went on in a low 
voice: ‘* Well, we are not in love with each other, 
of course, but I suppose that . . . that doesn’t mat- 
ter. JI am glad I can give her a refuge and peace 
and quiet, and make it possible for her not to work 
if she’s ill. She fancies that her coming to live 
with me will make things more orderly, and that 
under her influence I shall become a great scientist. 


Three Years 305 


That’s what she fancies. And let her fancy it. In 
the South they have a saying: ‘Fancy makes the 
fool-a tich:man. Ha, ha, hal”? 

Laptev said nothing. Yartsev walked up and 
down the study, looking at the pictures he had seen 
so many times before, and said with a sigh: 

‘“Yes, my dear fellow, I am three years older 
than you are, and it’s too late for me to think of 
real love, and in reality a woman like Polina Nik- 
olaevna is a godsend to me, and, of course, I shall 
get on capitally with her till we’re both old people; 
but, goodness knows why, one still regrets some- 
thing, one still longs for something, and [I still feel 
as though I am lying in the Vale of Daghestan and 
dreaming of a ball. In short, man’s never satis- 
fied with what he has.” 

He went into the drawing-room and began sing- 
ing as though nothing had happened, and Laptev sat 
in his study with his eyes shut, and tried to under- 
stand why Polina had gone to live with Yartsev. 
And then he felt sad that there were no lasting, 
permanent attachments. And he felt vexed that 
Polina Nikolaevna had gone to live with Yartsev, 
and vexed with himself that his feeling for his wife 
was not what it had been. | 


XV 


Laptev sat reading and swaying to and fro in a 
rocking-chair; Yulia was in the study, and she, too, 
was reading. It seemed there was nothing to talk 


306 The Darling and Other Stories 


about; they had both been silent all day. From 
time to time he looked at her from over his book 
and thought: ‘“‘ Whether one marries from pas- 
sionate love, or without love at all, doesn’t it come 
to the same thing?’’ And the time when he used 
to be jealous, troubled, distressed, seemed to him far 
away. He had succeeded in going abroad, and now 
he was resting after the journey and looking for- 
ward to another visit in the spring to England, which 
he had very much liked. 

And Yulia Sergeyevna had grown used to her sor- 
row, and had left off going to the lodge to cry. 
That winter she had given up driving out shopping, 
had given up the theatres and concerts, and had 
stayed at home. She never cared for big rooms, 
and always sat in her husband’s study or in her own 
room, where she had shrines of ikons that had come 
to her on her marriage, and where there hung on 
the wall the landscape that had pleased her so much 
at the exhibition. She spent hardly any money on 
herself, and was almost as frugal now as she had 
been in her father’s house. 

The winter passed cheerlessly. Card-playing was 
the rule everywhere in Moscow, and if any other 
recreation was attempted, such as singing, reading, 
drawing, the result was even more tedious. And 
since there were few talented people in Moscow, and 
the same singers and reciters performed at every 
entertainment, even the enjoyment of art gradually 


Three Years 307 


palled and became for many people a tiresome and 
monotonous social duty. 

Moreover, the Laptevs never had a day without 
something vexatious happening. Old Laptev’s eye- 
sight was failing; he no longer went to the ware- 
house, and the oculist told them that he would soon 
be blind. Fyodor had for some reason given up 
going to the warehouse and spent his time sitting 
at home writing something. Panaurov had got a 
post in another town, and had been promoted an 
actual civil councillor, and was now staying at the 
Dresden. He came to the Laptevs’ almost every 
day to ask for money. Kish had finished his studies 
at last, and while waiting for Laptev to find him a 
job, used to spend whole days at a time with them, 
telling them long, tedious stories. All this was ir- 
ritating and exhausting, and made daily life unpleas- 
ant. 

Pyotr came into the study, and announced an un- 
known lady. On the card he brought in was the 
name “ Josephina Iosefovna Milan.” 

Yulia Sergeyevna got up languidly and went out 
limping slightly, as her foot had gone to sleep. In 
the doorway appeared a pale, thin lady with dark 
eyebrows, dressed altogether in black. She clasped 
her hands on her bosom and said supplicatingly: 

““M. Laptev, save my children! ” 

The jingle of her bracelets sounded familiar to 
him, and he knew the face with patches of powder 


308 The Darling and Other Stories 


on it; he recognised her as the lady with whom he 
had once so inappropriately dined before his mar- 
riage. It was Panaurov’s second wife. 

‘“Save my children,” she repeated, and her face 
suddenly quivered and looked old and pitiful. 
‘“You alone can save us, and I have spent my last 
penny coming to Moscow to see you! My children 
are starving!” 

She made a motion as though she were going to 
fall on her knees. Laptev was alarmed, and 
clutched her by the arm. 

‘Sit down, sit down . . .”” he muttered, making 
her sit down. “I beg you to be seated.” 

‘“We have no money to buy bread,” she said. 
“Grigory Nikolaevitch is going away to a new post, 
but he will not take the children and me with him, 
and the money which you so generously send us he 
spends only on himself. What are we to do? 
What? My poor, unhappy children!” 

“Calm yourself, I beg. I will give orders that 
that money shall be made payable to you.” 

She began sobbing, and then grew calmer, and 
he noticed that the tears had made little pathways 
through the powder on her cheeks, and that she 
was growing a moustache. 

‘“You are infinitely generous, M. Laptev. But 
be our guardian angel, our good fairy, persuade 
Grigory Nikolaevitch not to abandon me, but to 
take me with him. You know I love him —I love 
him insanely; he’s the comfort of my life.” 


Three Years 309 


Laptev gave her a hundred roubles, and promised 
to talk to Panaurov, and saw her out to the hall in 
trepidation the whole time, for fear she should break 
into sobs or fall on her knees. 

After her, Kish made his appearance. ‘Then 
Kostya came in with his photographic apparatus. 
Of late he had been attracted by photography and 
took photographs of every one in the house several 
times a day. This new pursuit caused him many 
disappointments, and he had actually grown thinner. 

Before evening tea Fyodor arrived. Sitting in a 
corner in the study, he opened a book and stared for 
a long time at a page, obviously not reading. Then 
he spent a long time drinking tea; his face turned 
red. In his presence Laptev felt a load on his heart; 
even his silence was irksome to him. 

‘“‘ Russia may be congratulated on the appearance 
of a new author,” said Fyodor. ‘“ Joking apart, 
though, brother, I have turned out a little article — 
the firstfruits of my pen, so to say—and I’ve 
brought it to show you. Read it, dear boy, and tell 
me your opinion — but sincerely.” 

He took a manuscript out of his pocket and gave 
it to his brother. The article was called ‘‘ The 
Russian Soul’’; it was written tediously, in the col- 
ourless style in which people with no talent, but full 
of secret vanity, usually write. The leading idea 
of it was that the intellectual man has the right to 
disbelieve in the supernatural, but it is his duty to 
conceal his lack of faith, that he may not be a stum- 


310 The Darling and Other Stories 
bling-block and shake the faith of others. Without 


faith there is no idealism, and idealism is destined 
to save Europe and guide humanity into the true 
path. 

‘But you don’t say what Europe has to be saved 
from,”’ said Laptev. 

‘That’s intelligible of itself.” 

“Nothing is intelligible,’ said Laptev, and he 
walked about the room in agitation. “It’s not in- 
telligible to me why you wrote it. But that’s your 
business.” 

‘“T want to publish it in pamphlet form.” 

“ That’s your affair.” 

They were silent for a minute. Fyodor sighed 
and said: 

‘It’s an immense regret to me, dear brother, 
that we think differently. Oh, Alyosha, Alyosha, 
my darling brother! You and I are true Russians, 
true believers, men of broad nature; all of these 
German and Jewish crochets are not for us. You 
and I are not wretched upstarts, you know, but rep- 
resentatives of a distinguished merchant family.” 

“What do you mean by a distinguished family? ” 
said Laptev, restraining his irritation. “A dis- 
tinguished family! The landowners beat our grand- 
father and every low little government clerk punched 
him in the face. Our grandfather thrashed our 
father, and our father thrashed us. What has your 
distinguished family done for us? What sort of 
nerves, what sort of blood, have we inherited? For 


Three Years 311 


nearly three years you've been arguing like an 
ignorant deacon, and talking all sorts of nonsense, 
and now you've written — this slavish drivel here! 
While I, while I! Look at'me... . . No elasticity, 
no boldness, no strength of will; I tremble over ev- 
cry step I take as though I should be flogged for it. 
I am timid before nonentities, idiots, brutes, who are 
immeasurably my inferiors mentally and morally; 
I am afraid of porters, doorkeepers, policemen, 
gendarmes. Iam afraid of every one, because I was 
born of a mother who was terrified, and because from 
a child I was beaten and frightened! ... You 
and I will do well to have no children. Oh, God, 
grant that this distinguished merchant family may 
die with us!” 

Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat 
down at the table. 

‘“Are you arguing about something here?” she 
asked. ‘‘ Am J interrupting?” 

** No, little sister,” answered Fyodor. ‘ Our dis- 
cussion was of principles. Here, you are abusing 
the family,’ he added, turning to his brother. 
“That family has created a business worth a mil- 
lion, though. That stands for something, any- 
way!” 

‘A great distinction—a business worth a mil- 
lion! A man with no particular brains, without 
abilities, by chance becomes a trader, and then when 
he has grown rich he goes on trading from day to 
day, with no sort of system, with no aim, without 


312 The Darling and Other Stories 


having any particular greed for money. He trades 
mechanically, and money comes to him of itself, 
without his going to meet it. He sits all his life at 
his work, likes it only because he can domineer over 
his clerks and get the better of his customers. He’s 
a churchwarden because he can domineer over the 
choristers and keep them under his thumb; he’s the 
patron of a school because he likes to feel the teacher 
is his subordinate and enjoys lording it over him. 
The merchant does not love trading, he loves domi- 
nating, and your warehouse is not so much a com- 
mercial establishment as a torture chamber! And 
for a business like yours, you want clerks who have 
been deprived of individual character and personal 
life — and you make them such by forcing them in 
childhood to lick the dust for a crust of bread, and 
you've trained them from childhood to believe that 
you are their benefactors. No fear of your taking 
a university man into your warehouse!” 

‘University men are not suitable for our busi- 
ness, 

“That's not true,” cried “Laptevi. “Jt saa 

“Excuse me, it seems to me you spit into the 
well from which you drink yourself,” said Fyodor, 
and he got up. ‘‘ Our business is hateful to you, 
yet you make use of the income from it.” 

‘Aha! We've spoken our minds,” said Laptev, 
and he laughed, looking angrily at his brother. 
“Yes, if I didn’t belong to your distinguished fam- 
ily — if I had an ounce of will and courage, I should 


Three Years 313 


long ago have flung away that income, and have 
gone to work for my living. But in your warehouse 
you've destroyed all character in me from a child! 
I’m your product.” 

Fyodor looked at the clock and began hurriedly 
saying good-bye. He kissed Yulia’s hand and went 
out, but instead of going into the hall, walked into 
the drawing-room, then into the bedroom. 

“Tve forgotten how the rooms go,” he said in 
extreme confusion. “It’s a strange house. Isn’t 
it a strange hcuse!” 

He seemed utterly overcome as he put on his coat, 
and there was a look of pain on his face. Laptev 
felt no more anger; he was frightened, and at the 
same time felt sorry for Fyodor, and the warm, 
true love for his brother, which seemed to have died 
down in his heart during those three years, awoke, 
and he felt an intense desire to express that love. 

“Come to dinner with us to-morrow, Fyodor,” 
he said, and stroked him on the shoulder. ‘* Will 
you come?” 

“Yes, yes; but give me some water.”’ 

Laptev ran himself to the dining-room to take the 
first thing he could get from the sideboard. This 
was a tall beer-jug. He poured water into it and 
brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking, 
but bit a piece out of the jug; they heard a crunch, 
and then sobs. The water ran over his fur coat 
and his jacket, and Laptev, who had never seen men 
cry, stood in confusion and dismay, not knowing 


314 The Darling and Other Stories 


what to do. He looked on helplessly while Yulia 
and the servant took off Fyodor’s coat and helped 
him back again into the room, and went with him, 
feeling guilty. 

Yulia made Fyodor lie down on the sofa and 
knelt beside him. 

“It’s nothing,” she said, trying to comfort him. 
PLCS your fervess — a2" 

*“T’m so miserable, my dear!” he said. 1] am 
so unhappy, unhappy ... but all the time I’ve 
been hiding it, I’ve been hiding it!” 

He put his arm round her neck and whispered 
in her ear: 

‘Every night I see my sister Nina. She comes 
anu sits inthe chair néarimy bed, . 

When, an hour later, he put on his fur coat in 
the hall, he was smiling again and ashamed to face 
the servant. Laptev went with him to Pyatnitsky 
Street. 

‘Come and have dinner with us to-morrow,” he 
said on the way, holding him by the arm, “ and at 
Easter we'll go abroad together. You absolutely 
must have a change, or you'll be getting quite mor- 
bid.” 

When he got home Laptev found his wife in a 
state of great nervous agitation. The scene with 
Fyodor had upset her, and she could not recover her 
composure. She wasn’t crying but kept tossing on 
the bed, clutching with cold fingers at the quilt, at 


Three Years 315 


the pillows, at her husband’s hands. Her eyes 
looked big and frightened. 

“Don’t go away from me, don’t go away,” she 
said to her husband. “ Tell me, Alyosha, why have 
I left off saying my prayers? What has become of 
my faith? Oh, why did you talk of religion before 
me? You’ve shaken my faith, you and your 
friends. I never pray now.” 

He put compresses on her forehead, chafed her 
hands, gave her tea to drink, while she huddled up 
to-himin-terror. .... 

Towards morning she was worn out and fell 
asleep, while Laptev sat beside her and held her 
hand. So that he could get no sleep. The whole 
day afterwards he felt shattered and dull, and wan- 
dered listlessly about the rooms without a thought 
in his head. 


XVI 


The doctor said that Fyodor’s mind was af- 
fected. Laptev did not know what to do in his fa- 
ther’s house, while the dark warehouse in which 
neither his father nor Fyodor ever appeared now 
seemed to him like a sepulchre. When his wife told 
him that he absolutely must go every day to the 
warehouse and also to his father’s, he either said 
nothing, or began talking irritably of his childhood, 
saying that it was beyond his power to forgive his 
father for his past, that the warehouse and the 


316 ‘The Darling and Other Stories 


house in Pyatnitsky Street were hateful to him, and 
so on. 

One Sunday morning Yulia went herself to Pyat- 
nitsky Street. She found old Fyodor Stepanovitch 
in the same big drawing-room in which the service 
had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slip- 
pers, and without a cravat, he was sitting motion- 
less in his arm-chair, blinking with his sightless eyes. 

“It’s [— your daughter-in-law,” she said, going 
up to him. ‘I’ve come to see how you are.” 

He began breathing heavily with excitement. 

Touched by his affliction and his loneliness, she 
kissed his hand; and he passed his hand over her 
face and head, and having satisfied himself that it 
was she, made the sign of the cross over her. 

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. ‘‘ You know 
I’ve lost my eyes and can see nothing. . . . I can 
dimly see the window and the fire, but people and 
things I cannot see at all. Yes, I’m going blind, and 
Fyodor has fallen ill, and without the master’s eye 
things are ina bad way now. If there is any irregu- 
larity there’s no one to look into it; and folks soon 
get spoiled. And why is it Fyodor has fallen ill? 
Did he catch cold? Here I have never ailed in 
my life and never taken medicine. I never saw any- 
thing of doctors.” 

And, as he always did, the old man began boast- 
ing. Meanwhile the servants hurriedly laid the 
table and brought in lunch and bottles of wine. 


‘ree: Years 317 


Ten bottles were put on the table; one of them was 
in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. There was a 
whole dish of hot pies smelling of jam, rice, and fish. 

‘““T beg my dear guest to have lunch,” said the old 
man. 

She took him by the arm, led him to the table, 
and poured him out a glass of vodka. 

‘““T will come to you again to-morrow,” she said, 
“and I'll bring your granchildren, Sasha and Lida. 
They will be sorry for you, and fondle you.” 

“There’s no need. Don’t bring them. They 
are illegitimate.” 

‘Why are they illegitimate? Why, their father 
and mother were married.” 

‘“Without my permission. I do not bless them, 
and I don’t want to know them. Let them be.” 

“You speak strangely, Fyodor Stepanovitch,”’ 
said Yulia, with a sigh. 

“Tt is written in the Gospel: children must fear 
and honour their parents.” 

“Nothing of the sort. The Gospel tells us that 
we must forgive even our enemies.” 

‘One can’t forgive in our business. If you were 
to forgive every one, you would come to ruin in 
three years.” 

“But to forgive, to say a kind, friendly word to 
any one, even a sinner, is something far above busi- 
ness, far above wealth.” 

Yulia longed to soften the old man, to awaken a 


318 The Darling and Other Stories 


feeling of compassion in him, to move him to repent- 
ance; but he only listened condescendingly to all she 
said, as a grown-up person listens to a child. 

“Fyodor Stepanovitch,” said Yulia resolutely, 
“you are an old man, and God soon will call you 
to Himself. He won’t ask you how you managed 
your business, and whether you were successful in it, 
but whether you were gracious to people; or whether 
you were harsh to those who were weaker than you, 
such as your servants, your clerks.” 

‘“T was always the benefactor of those that served 
me; they ought to remember me in their prayers for- 
ever,” said the old man, with conviction, but touched 
by Yulia’s tone of sincerity, and anxious to give her 
pleasure, he said: ‘‘ Very well; bring my grand- 
children to-morrow. I will tell them to buy me 
some little presents for them.” 

The old man was slovenly in his dress, and there 
was cigar ash on his breast and on his knees; ap- 
parently no one cleaned his boots, or brushed his 
clothes. The rice in the pies was half cooked, the 
tablecloth smelt of soap, the servants tramped nois- 
ily about the room. And the old man and the 
whole house had a neglected look, and Yulia, who 
felt this, was ashamed of herself and of her hus- 
band. 

‘“T will be sure to come and see you to-morrow,” 
she said. 

She walked through the rooms, and gave orders 
for the old man’s bedroom to be set to rights, and 


Three Years 319 


the lamp to be lighted under the ikons in it. Fyo- 
dor, sitting in his own room, was looking at an open 
book without reading it. Yulia talked to him and 
told the servants to tidy his room, too; then she 
went downstairs to the clerks. In the middle of the 
room where the clerks used to dine, there was an un- 
painted wooden post to support the ceiling and to 
prevent its coming down. ‘The ceilings in the base- 
ment were low, the walls covered with cheap paper, 
and there was a smell of charcoal fumes and cook- 
ing. As it was a holiday, all the clerks were at 
home, sitting on their bedsteads waiting for dinner. 
When Yulia went in they jumped up, and answered 
her questions timidly, looking up at her from under 
their brows like convicts. 

“Good heavens! What a horrid room you 
have!” she said, throwing up her hands. “ Aren't 
you crowded here?” 

‘Crowded, but not aggrieved,” said Makeitchev. 
“We are greatly indebted to you, and will offer up 
our prayers for you to our Heavenly Father.” 

“The congruity of life with the conceit of the 
personality,” said Potchatkin. 

And noticing that Yulia did not understand Po- 
tchatkin, Makeitchev hastened to explain: 

“We are humble people and must live according 
to our position.” 

She inspected the boys’ quarters, and then the 
kitchen, made acquaintance with the housekeeper, 
and was thoroughly dissatisfied. 


320 The Darling and Other Stories 


When she got home she said to her husband: 

“We ought to move into your father’s house and 
settle there for good as socn as possible. And you 
will go every day to the warehouse.” 

Then they both sat side by side in the study with- 
out speaking. His heart was heavy, and he did not 
want to move into Pyatnitsky Street or to go into 
the warehouse; but he guessed what his wife was 
thinking, and could not oppose her. He stroked 
her cheek and said: 

‘““T feel as though our life is already over, and 
that a grey half-life is beginning for us. When I 
knew that my brother Fyodor was hopelessly ill, 
I shed tears; we spent our childhood and youth to- 
gether, when I loved him with my whole soul. And 
now this catastrophe has come, and it seems, too, 
as though, losing him, I am finally cut away from 
my past. And when vou said just now that we must 
move into the house in Pyatnitsky Street, to that 
prison, it began to seem to me that there was no 
future for me either.” 

He got up and walked to the window. 

“However that may be, one has to give up all 
thoughts of happiness,” he said, looking out into 
the ‘street: “There is none. I never have had 
any, and I suppose it doesn’t exist at all. I was 
happy once in my life, though, when I sat at night 
under your parasol. Do you remember how you 
left your parasol at Nina’s?”’ he asked, turning to 
his wife. “I was in love with you then, and [I re- 


a ree. VeAre 321 


member I spent all night sitting under your parasol, 
and was perfectly blissful.”’ 

Near the book-case in the study stood a mahogany 
chest with bronze fittings where Laptev kept various 
useless things, including the parasol. He took it 
out and handed it to his wife. 

Pepsere it is.” 

- Yulia looked for a minute at the parasol, recog- 
nised it, and smiled mournfully. 

““T remember,” she said. ‘‘ When you proposed 
to me you held it in your hand.” And seeing that 
he was preparing to go out, she said: ‘‘ Please 
come back early if youcan. Iam dull without you.” 

And then she went into her own room, and gazed 
for a long time at the parasol. 


XVII 


In spite of the complexity of the business and 
the immense turnover, there were no bookkeepers 
in the warehouse, and it was impossible to make 
anything out of the books kept by the cashier in the 
office. Every day the warehouse was visited by 
agents, German and English, with whom the clerks 
talked politics and religion. A man of noble birth, 
ruined by drink, an ailing, pitiable creature, used to 
come to translate the foreign correspondence in the 
office; the clerks used to call him a midge, and put 
salt in his tea. And altogether the whole concern 
struck Laptev as a very queer business. 

He went to the warehouse every day and tried to 


322 The Darling and Other Stories 


establish a new order of things; he forbade them 
to thrash the boys and to jeer at the buyers, and was 
violently angry when the clerks gleefully despatched 
to the provinces worthless shop-soiled goods as 
though they were new and fashionable. Now he 
was the chief person in the warehouse, but still, as 
before, he did not know how large his fortune was, 
whether his business was doing well, how much the 
senior clerks were paid, and so on. Potchatkin and 
Makeitchey looked upon him as young and _ inex- 
perienced, concealed a great deal from him, and 
whispered mysteriously every evening with his blind 
old father. 

It somehow happened at the beginning of June 
that Laptev went into the Bubnovsky restaurant 
with Potchatkin to talk business with him over 
lunch. Potchatkin had been with the Laptevs a 
long while, and had entered their service at eight 
years old. He seemed to belong to them — they 
trusted him fully; and when on leaving the ware- 
house he gathered up all the takings from the till 
and thrust them into his pocket, it never aroused the 
slightest suspicion. He was the head man in the 
business and in the house, and also in the church, 
where he performed the duties of churchwarden 
in place of his old master. He was nicknamed 
Malyuta Skuratov on account of his cruel treatment 
of the boys and clerks under him. 

When they went into the restaurant he nodded to 
a waiter and said: 


Three Years 223 


** Bring us, my lad, half a bodkin and twenty-four 
unsavouries.”” 

After a brief pause the waiter brought on a tray 
half a bottle of vodka and some plates of various 
kinds of savouries. 

“Look here, my good fellow,” said Potchatkin. 
“Give us a plateful of the source of all slander and 
evil-speaking, with mashed potatoes.” 

The waiter did not understand; he was puzzled, 
and would have said something, but Potchatkin 
looked at him sternly and said: 

“Except.” 

The waiter thought intently, then went to con- 
sult with his colleagues, and in the end guessing what 
was meant, brought a plateful of tongue. When 
they had drunk a couple of glasses and had had 
lunch, Laptev asked: 

“Tell me, Ivan Vassilitch, is it true that our busi- 
ness has been dropping off for the last year?” 

PeIvota bit of it.” 

“Tell me frankly and honestly what income we 
have been making and are making, and what our 
profits are. We can’t go on in the dark. We had 
a balancing of the accounts at the warehouse lately, 
but, excuse me, I don’t believe in it; you think fit 
to conceal something from me and only tell the truth 
to my father. You have been used to being diplo- 
matic from your childhood, and now you can’t get on 
without it. And what’s the use of it? So I beg you 
to be open. What is our position? ” 


324 The Darling and Other Stories 


“Tt all depends upon the fluctuation of credit,” 
Potchatkin answered after a moment’s pause. 

‘What do you understand by the fluctuation of 
credit?” 

Potchatkin began explaining, but Laptev could 
make nothing of it, and sent for Makeitchev. ‘The 
latter promptly made his appearance, had some 
lunch after saying grace, and in his sedate, mellow 
baritone began saying first cf all that the clerks were 
in duty bound to pray night and day for their bene- 
factors. 

‘‘ By all means, only allow me not to consider my- 
self your benefactor,” said Laptev. 

“Every man ought to remember what he is, and 
to be conscious of his station. By the grace of God 
you are a father and benefactor to us, and we are 
your slaves.”’ 

“Tam sick of all that!” said Laptev, getting 
angry. " Please be a benefactor to/ me now. 
Please explain the position of our business. Give 
up looking upon me as a boy, or to-morrow I shall 
close the business. My father is blind, my brother 
is in the asylum, my nieces are only children. [ hate 
the business; I should be glad to go away, but there’s 
no one to take my place, as you know. For good- 
ness’ sake, drop your diplomacy!” 

They went to the warehouse to go into the ac- 
counts; then they went on with them at home in 
the evening, the old father himself assisting. Initi- 
ating his son into his commercial secrets, the old 


Three Years 325 


man spoke as though he were engaged, not in trade, 
but in sorcery. It appeared that the profits of the 
business were increasing approximately ten per cent. 
per annum, and that the Laptevs’ fortune, reckon- 
ing only money and paper securities, amounted to six 
million roubles. 

When at one o'clock at night, after balancing the 
accounts, Laptev went out into the open air, he was 
still under the spell of those figures. It was a still, 
sultry, moonlight night. The white walls of the 
houses beyond the river, the heavy barred gates, 
the stillness and the black shadows, combined to give 
the impression of a fortress, and nothing was want- 
ing to complete the picture but a sentinel with a 
gun. Laptev went into the garden and sat down 
on a seat near the fence, which divided them from 
the neighbour’s yard, where there was a garden, 
too. The bird-cherry was in bloom. Laptev re- 
membered that the tree had been just as gnarled 
and just as big when he was a child, and had not 
changed at all since then. Every corner of the gar- 
den and of the yard recalled the far-away past. 
And in his childhood, too, just as now, the whole 
yard bathed in moonlight could be seen through the 
sparse trees, the shadows had been mysterious and 
forbidding, a black dog had lain in the middle of 
the yard, and the clerks’ windows had stood wide 
open. And all these were cheerless memories. 

The other side of the fence, in the neighbour’s 
yard, there was a sound of light steps. 


326 The Darling and Other Stories 


” 


"My sweet, my prectous.; +." said <a man 
voice so near the fence that Laptev could hear the 
man’s breathing. 

Now they were kissing. Laptey was convinced 
that the millions and the business which was so dis- 
tasteful to him were ruining his life, and would make 
him a complete slave. He imagined how, little by 
little, he would grow accustomed to his position; 
would, little by little, enter into the part of the head 
of a great firm; would begin to grow dull and old, 
die in the end, as the average man usually does die, 
in a decrepit, soured old age, making every one about 
him miserable and depressed. But what hindered 
him from giving up those millions and that business, 
and leaving that yard and garden which nad been 
hateful to him from his childhood? 

The whispering and kisses the other side of the 
fence disturbed him. He moved into the middle 
of the yard, and, unbuttoning his shirt over his chest, 
looked at the moon, and it seemed to him that he 
would order the gate to be unlocked, and would go 
out and never come back again. His heart ached 
sweetly with the foretaste of freedom; he laughed 
joyously, and pictured how exquisite, poetical, and 
even holy, life might be... . 

But he still stood and did not go away, and kept 
asking himself: ‘‘ What keeps me here?” And 
he felt angry with himself and with the black dog, 
which still lay stretched on the stone yard, instead 
of running off to the open country, to the woods, 


Three Years 329 


where it would have been free and happy. It was 
clear that that dog and he were prevented from leav- 
ing the yard by the same thing; the habit of bondage, 
Of servitude... . 

At midday next morning he went to see his wife, 
and that he might not be dull, asked Yartsev to go 
with him. Yulia Sergeyevna was staying in a sum- 
mer villa at Butovo, and he had not been to see 
her for five days. When they reached the station 
the friends got into a carriage, and all the way there 
Yartsev was singing and in raptures over the ex- 
quisite weather. ‘The villa was in a great park not 
far from the station. At the beginning of an ave- 
nue, about twenty paces from the gates, Yulia 
Sergeyevna was sitting under a broad, spreading 
poplar, waiting for her guests. She had on a light, 
elegant dress of a pale cream colour trimmed with 
lace, and in her hand she had the old familiar para- 
sol. Yartsev greeted her and went on to the villa 
from which came the sound of Sasha’s and Lida’s 
voices, while Laptev sat down beside her to talk of 
business matters. 

“Why is it you haven’t been for so long?” she 
said, keeping his hand in hers. “I have been sit- 
ting here for days watching for youto come. I miss 
you so when you are away!” 

She stood up and passed her hand over his hair, 
and scanned his face, his shoulders, his hat, with 
interest. 

“You know I love you,” she said, and flushed 


328 The Darling and Other Stories 


crimson. ‘‘ You are precious to me. Here you’ve 
come. I see you, and I’m so happy I can't tell you. 
Well, let us talk. Tell me something.” 

She had told him she loved him, and he could 
only feel as though he had been married to her for 
ten years, and that he was hungry for his lunch. 
She had put her arm round his neck, tickling his 
cheek with the silk of her dress; he cautiously re- 
moved her hand, stood up, and without uttering a 
single word, walked to the villa. The little girls 
ran to meet him. 

‘How they have grown!” he thought. ‘* And 
what changes in these three years. . . . But one 
may have to live another thirteen years, another 
thirty years. . . . What is there in store for us in 
the future? If we live, we shall see.” 

He embraced Sasha and Lida, who hung upon 
his neck, and said: 

‘“Grandpapa sends his love. . . . Uncle Fyodor 
is dying. Uncle Kostya has sent a letter from Amer- 
ica and sends you his love in it. He’s bored at the 
exhibition and will soon be back. And Uncle Alyo- 
sha is hungry.” 

Then he sat on the verandah and saw his wife 
walking slowly along the avenue towards the house. 
She was deep in thought; there was a mournful, 
charming expression in her face, and her eyes were 
bright with tears. She was not now the slender, 
fragile, pale-faced girl she used to be; she was a 
mature, beautiful, vigorous woman. And Laptev 


‘hree Years 329 


saw the enthusiasm with which Yartsev looked at 
her when he met her, and the way her new, lovely 
expression was reflected in his face, which looked 
mournful and ecstatic too. One would have 
thought that he was seeing her for the first time in 
his life. And while they were at lunch on the ver- 
andah, Yartsev smiled with a sort of joyous shy- 
ness, and kept gazing at Yulia and at her beautiful 
neck. Laptev could not help watching them while 
he thought that he had perhaps another thirteen, 
another thirty years of life before him. . . . And 
what would he have to live through in that time? 
What is in store for us in the future? 

And he thought: 

** Let us live, and we shall see.” 


THE END 


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